Print Page - Increase in Knowledge/New Technologies

CNN experiments with Hologram reporting
washingtonpost.com--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nearly 71 million viewers watched the United States elect its first African American president, across 14 television networks Tuesday night.

And about 13.3 million of them were treated to CNN star Anderson Cooper's historic interview with a hologram of Will.I.Am about the "Yes, We Can" video that the musician made for the Barack Obama election effort, and to Wolf Blitzer chatting with Chief Capitol Hill Hologram Jessica Yellin. She was beamed in from Chicago's Grant Park to talk about whether the crowd gathered there awaiting Obama's victory speech was excited. (They were, viewers learned while they pondered whether a CNN correspondent flickering blue around the edges was any less fair and balanced than a non-flickering CNN correspondent.)

CNN's 13.3 million viewers, garnered between the start of prime time at 8 and the end of President-elect Obama's speech at about 12:30 a.m., is not only the biggest audience in the cable net's 28-year history but also marks the first time the cable news network made a clean sweep of all the broadcast and cable networks on election night. Its closest competitor, ABC, logged 12.5 million in those same hours. NBC and CBS lagged with 12 million and 7.5 million, respectively.

Probably because the race was called so early -- 11 p.m. -- Tuesday's election night clocked about 10 million more people than watched 2000's controversial and endless matchup between George W. Bush and Al Gore. And it's about 12 million more than watched the 2004 election night face-off between President Bush and John Kerry.

More to the point, it's the biggest TV audience since February's Super Bowl, which averaged 97.5 million viewers.

During their Hologram Moment, Cooper asked Will.I.Am how he came up with the "Yes, We Can" video, which "really got an enormous play." But, again, here, it's unlikely anybody cared what Will.I.Am had to say in this, his gajillionth interview about the video -- nothing new, BTW -- being completely preoccupied as they were with the Black Eyed Pea in his new Beam-Me-Up-Scotty state.

The Post's Paul Farhi wondered whether Blitzer could have walked through Yellin, and yesterday asked CNN's senior vice president and Washington bureau chief David Bohrman, who was the guy behind the election-night bells and whistles.

Had Blitzer tried to walk through Yellin, besides being the height of rudeness, he would have blacked out, because in Hologram World, two people can't occupy the same space simultaneously, Bohrman assured Farhi.

Blitzer couldn't actually see Yellin standing a few feet in front of him, nor could Cooper see Will.I.Am. The two anchors saw their interview subjects via monitors, said Bohrman, who predicted it would be another dozen years before anchors could actually see their hologramterviews on the set. Right now, it's kind of like when your local weatherman points to clouds and low-pressure systems on the map he/she pretends to see but actually can't and is instead looking at the map on a monitor.

Had Blitzer walked behind Yellin, Bohrman noted, we could have seen a little of Blitzer through her. Try not to think about that; put it out of your mind.

And, the flickering blue edges were added to Yellin and Will.I.Am to make them look a little more like Princess Leia and a little less like Cokie Roberts in a trench coat over her evening dress pretending to be standing in front of the Capitol, Bohrman said.

The CNN exec said the hologramology technology makes sense when an anchor is trying to have a more intimate conversation with a correspondent than he can have if said correspondent is being mobbed by those annoying waving crowds. On the other hand, to make the hologram thing work, the correspondent, or Black Eyed Pea, has to be removed from the distracting crowd anyway, and put in a green-screen-ish tent in a studio, and surrounded by about 40 fixed HD cameras.

Bohrman said he had no plans to use hologramterviews again in the immediate future, calling them "an ornament on a tree" and not the centerpiece of CNN's election-night coverage.

Enjoy surveillance while it is still visible
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Measures such as ID cards are a temporary measure before biometric technology becomes ubiquitous; That was the warning from security guru Bruce Schneier this week who claims that surveillance technology will get more sophisticated and, more importantly, smaller and harder to detect. "We live in a very unique time in our society. The cameras are everywhere and you can still see them," said Schneier, BT's chief security technology officer. "Five years ago they weren't everywhere, five years from now you are not going to see them."

As well as camera technology becoming less obtrusive, Schneier said that ID checks would also become less obvious and may not even require the obvious cooperation of the individual being checked. "Five years ago there weren't ID checks everywhere," he said. "But five or ten years from now they will happen in the background. It will be an Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chip in your wallet, you won't even know its being checked."

Biometric technologies such as face recognition, or systems based on a particular type of mobile phone owned or even clothes, may also be used for identity checks. The increase in background ID checks means that the current debate around national ID cards in the UK is only a short-term issue, according to Schneier. "I know there are debates on ID cards everywhere but in a lot of ways, they are only very temporary. They are only a temporary solution till biometrics takes over," he said.

Eventually, even airports won't actually require people to show ID, as the checks will just happen in the background while you queue for check-in or move through the terminal. "When you walk into the airport they will know who you are. You won't have to show an ID – why bother? They can process you quicker," he said.

Schneier also amused the audience by admitting that he used an ID card that he had made himself to gain entry to the security event he was speaking at. "We all had to show an ID before we got our RSA badge. I actually showed one I made at home. They asked for a photo-ID not an ID that was endorsed by anyone. It is endorsed by me and I guarantee that it is correct," he said. "It works everywhere but airports I find."

The UK recently launched the first batch of its proposed national ID card scheme which is being mandated for foreign workers from November. The cards will slowly be applied to other groups, including eventually a voluntary national distribution but which will also include the addition of driving licences to the national ID database.

First 'humanoid' robot that can mimic the facial expressions and lip movements of a human being
dailymail.co.uk
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scientists have created the first 'humanoid' robot that can mimic the facial expressions and lip movements of a human being.

'Jules' - a disembodied androgynous robotic head - can automatically copy the movements, which are picked up by a video camera and mapped on to the tiny electronic motors in his skin.

It can grin and grimace, furrow its brow and 'speak' as his software translates real expressions observed through video camera 'eyes'.

Jules is the first humanoid robot who can realistically mimic a real person's expressions merely by watching their face

Jules mimics the expressions by converting the video image into digital commands that make the robot's servos and motors produce mirrored movements.

And it all happens in real time as the robot can interpret the commands at 25 frames per second.

The project, called 'Human-Robot Interaction', was devised at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL), run by the University of the West of England and the University of Bristol.

A team of robotics engineers - Chris Melhuish, Neill Campbell and Peter Jaeckel - spent three-and-a-half years developing the breakthrough software to create interaction between humans and artificial intelligence.

Jules has 34 internal motors covered with flexible rubber ('Frubber') skin, which was commissioned from roboticist David Hanson in the US for BRL.

It was originally programmed to act out a series of movements - as can be seen in the video - where 'Jules' talks about 'destroying Wales'.

The technology works using ten stock human emotions - such as happiness, sadness, concern etc - that the team 'taught' Jules via programming.

The software then maps what it sees to Jules's face to combine expressions instantly to mimic those being shown by a human subject.

'We have a repertoire of behaviours that somehow is dynamic', Chris Melhuish said.

'If you want people to be able to interact with machines, then you've got to be able to do it naturally.

'When it moves, it has to look natural in the same way that human expressions are, to make interaction useful.'

Peter Jaeckel, who works in artificial emotion, artificial empathy and humanoids at BRL, said: 'Realistic, life-like robot appearance is crucial for sophisticated face-to-face robot-human interaction.

'Researchers predict that one day, robotic companions will work, or assist humans in space, care and education.

'Robot appearance and behaviour need to be well matched to meet expectations formed by our social experience.

'Violation of these expectations due to subtle imperfections or imbalance between appearance and behaviour results in discomfort in humans that perceive or observe the robot.

'If people were put off, it would counteract all efforts to achieve trustworthiness, reliability and emotional intelligence.

'All these are requirements for robotic companions, assisting astronauts in space or care robots employed as social companions for the elderly.

'Unlike most research projects, the focus lies on dynamic, subtle, facial expressions, rather than static exaggerated facial displays.

'Copycat robot heads have been created before, but never with realistic human-looking faces.'

But not everyone is impressed by Jules's mastery of mimicry.

Kerstin Dautenhahn, a robotics researcher at the University of Herefordshire, believes that people may be disconcerted by humanoid automatons that simply look 'too human'.

'Research has shown that if you have a robot that has many human-like features, then people might actually react negatively towards it,' she said.

'If you expose vulnerable people, like children or elderly people, to something that they might mistake for human, then you would automatically encourage a social relationship.

'They might easily be fooled to think that this robot not only looks like a human and behaves like a human, but that it can also feel like a human. And that's not true.'

It is hoped that the technology developed in Jules will help create robots for use in space, to accompany astronauts on solo missions, and in healthcare settings and nursing homes.

Watch a video of Jules here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S-fmKqwa98 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S-fmKqwa98)

Australian web filter to block 10,000 internet sites

www.news.com.au/heraldsun
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Australia's mandatory net filter is being primed to block 10,000 websites as part of a blacklist of unspecified "unwanted content".

Some 1300 websites have already been identified by the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

Communications Minister Senator Conroy revealed details of the Rudd Government's proposed web filter as he called for expressions of interest from internet service providers (ISPs) for a live trial of the technology, the Courier-Mail reports.

ISPs will test ways to filter the web using volunteer subscribers. The trial will start before Christmas and is expected to last six weeks.

"The pilot will specifically test filtering against the ACMA blacklist of prohibited content, which is mostly child pornography, as well as filtering of other unwanted content," Senator Conroy told Parliament today.

"While the ACMA blacklist is currently around 1300 URLs, the pilot will test against this list - as well as filtering for a range of URLs to around 10,000 - so that the impacts on network performance of a larger blacklist can be examined."

A spokesman for Mr Conroy later said: ''The pilot will provide an invaluable opportunity for ISPs to inform the Government’s approach.

''The live pilot will provide valuable real-world evidence of the potential impact on internet speeds and costs to industry and will help ensure we implement a filtering solution that is efficient, effective and easy for Australian families to use.''

An ACMA trial of web-filtering technology this year found it could slow internet access by as much as 87 per cent and by at least 2 per cent.

Electronic Frontiers Australia board member Colin Jacobs said his civil liberties group was concerned at what would be deemed "unwanted content".

"It is unclear how ACMA will scale up their blacklist to 10,000 websites and what will go on the list," he said.

"Conroy said the list would contain illegal and unwanted content but we still have to see what would end up on that list.

"Under the current mandate that includes adult material, which would mean most material that could be rated R and, in some circumstances, material rated MA15+."

Google Trends - What The World Is Searching And Thinking

canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/editorials/story.

Collective intelligence might be the most unreliable and elusive resource on the planet. But when someone does manage to tap it, it can be powerful.

Just think of Wikipedia, which has proven to be a broad, flexible and surprisingly accurate source of information, because anyone can edit it.

One of the most exciting new experiments in collective intelligence comes from Google. (Where else?) It's called Google Flu Trends. It monitors how often users in various parts of the United States enter certain phrases into its search engine: "flu symptoms", for example, or "chills."

Over time, the graph of flu-related searches is strikingly similar to the graph of documented flu outbreaks. If there's a spike in flu cases in late November in Maine, it will show up in Google searches as well as doctor's offices.

But the really exciting thing is that Google might know about the spike a week or two before public health authorities do, because people tend to search the Internet before they call their doctors. This means that by monitoring search engines, governments can predict outbreaks earlier. Google suggests the tool might even help governments mount an early response to a pandemic.

It's worth remembering that the effectiveness of a tool like Google Flu Trends depends on the computer literacy and access to technology of a given population. It might also be skewed by fears (see "Massive Surge in traffic for keyword “antichrist” since Obama victory") and misperceptions.

It's also worth asking what uses authoritarian governments might find for search-engine monitoring. But while any tool can be misused or misinterpreted, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be used at all.
Besides, when it comes down to it, Google's latest toy is really cool. That in itself could inspire more innovative collaborations between public-health agencies and technogeeks.

Packs of robots to hunt down uncooperative humans

newscientist.com

The latest request from the Pentagon jars the senses. At least, it did mine. They are looking for contractors to provide a "Multi-Robot Pursuit System" that will let packs of robots "search for and detect a non-cooperative human".

One thing that really bugs defence chiefs is having their troops diverted from other duties to control robots. So having a pack of them controlled by one person makes logistical sense. But I'm concerned about where this technology will end up.

Given that iRobot last year struck a deal with Taser International to mount stun weapons on its military robots, how long before we see packs of droids hunting down pesky demonstrators with paralysing weapons? Or could the packs even be lethally armed? I asked two experts on automated weapons what they thought.

Both were concerned that packs of robots would be entrusted with tasks - and weapons - they were not up to handling without making wrong decisions.

Steve Wright of Leeds Metropolitan University is an expert on police and military technologies, and last year correctly predicted this pack-hunting mode of operation would happen. "The giveaway here is the phrase 'a non-cooperative human subject'," he told me:

"What we have here are the beginnings of something designed to enable robots to hunt down humans like a pack of dogs. Once the software is perfected we can reasonably anticipate that they will become autonomous and become armed.

We can also expect such systems to be equipped with human detection and tracking devices including sensors which detect human breath and the radio waves associated with a human heart beat. These are technologies already developed."

Another commentator often in the news for his views on military robot autonomy is Noel Sharkey, an AI and robotics engineer at the University of Sheffield. He says he can understand why the military want such technology, but also worries it will be used irresponsibly.

"This is a clear step towards one of the main goals of the US Army's Future Combat Systems project, which aims to make a single soldier the nexus for a large scale robot attack. Independently, ground and aerial robots have been tested together and once the bits are joined, there will be a robot force under command of a single soldier with potentially dire consequences for innocents around the corner."

What do you make of this? Are we letting our militaries run technologically amok with our tax dollars? Or can robot soldiers be programmed to be even more ethical than human ones, as some researchers claim?

Consumers give thumbs up to fingerprints

Consumers have given the thumbs up to the use of fingerprint scanning as a preferred way of using biometric identification to verify their identities with banks, government agencies and other organisations.

Analysis of data collated by Unisys Corp alongside the latest instalment of its bi-annual Security Index concludes that people felt reassured by fingerprint scanning more than any other biometric.

Some 67% of consumers surveyed around the globe said they trusted fingerprint scans, which is far higher than any other type of biometric identification method, the company said.

“Biometric and other identity-based measures are one of the more visible approaches organisations can take to reassure customers that their personal information is protected” said Neil Fisher, VP ID management for Unisys. There are understandable implications for businesses in the financial services sectors, with Unisys finding that worry about the fraudulent use of credit or debit cards ranked the number one or two highest concern in 11 of 13 countries surveyed.

The findings of the study give IT directors all the more reason to consider the option as an acceptable and effective way of protecting high value data and customer identities.

To date the technology has made only slow inroads at the enterprise level and is being variously deployed as a replacement for swipe cards in time and attendance applications, to secure entry to hospital wards and airports, and at banking ATMs to verify chip-and-PIN based transactions.

But the global market for biometric products is projected to surpass $7 billion by 2012, according to Business Intelligence.

One of the key areas for growth is non-automated fingerprint identification biometrics systems, driven by government ID management programmes, criminal ID and surveillance and private sector initiatives such as employee ID.

Unisys reported that acceptance of such ID schemes was found to be higher in regions where governments and other organisations already embrace biometrics such as Malaysia and Australia, and in the UK with its proposed national ID card.

3D TV revolution: Sky promises images that leap out of the screen

Sky is promising to 'blow away' viewers by introducing 3D television to millions of living rooms within the next year.

The satellite broadcaster demonstrated the technology this week - showing images shot at rugby and football matches which made the action appear to leap out of the screen.

Viewers will need to wear special glasses which allow the brain to process images so that they appear to be in your living room.

The images are a world away from the first black and white TV pictures screened from Alexandra Palace in North London more than 70 years ago.

Gerry O'Sullivan, Sky's product development director, said the proposed service would be piped to the firm's existing high-definition (HD) set-top boxes.

'Lots of people have seen a 3D film - we want to bring that experience into the living room,' he said.

'Everyone who has seen the 3D service has been blown away by it.'

Filming in 3D involves using two separate cameras which are placed close together as they mimic the behaviour and alignment of the human eye focusing on the left and right angle of an image.

The images are then edited and converted into a 3D picture through a processor.

Brian Lenz, the company's head of product design and innovation, added: 'We're just exploring right now but the next step is going to be to find out whether 3DTV is something people are going to be interested in.'

It emerged that Sky has spent months secretly filming sports events for 3D processing.

It has also produced a 3D version of the show Gladiators.

While the Sky+HD set-top boxes will be able to deal with 3D images, when they are eventually broadcast, viewers will also require special three-dimensional TVs.

These cost around £2,500 but it is hoped that cheaper models will be introduced and that manufacturers will also produce screens which will not need viewers to wear special glasses.

The impending 3D revolution follows the success of HDTV.

'We are ready to go,' added Mr O'Sullivan.

'It is now a question of whether customers actually want this service.

'But we are confident there will be a lot of interest and that a 3D service could be launched relatively quickly.'

Chris John, Sky's chief engineer, told how programme-makers were equally excited about using 3D technology.

Earlier this year, the BBC broadcast a 3D version of England's defeat by Scotland in the Six Nations rugby championship.

The match was watched by an invited audience at a cinema in London.

One of the people watching recalled: 'One of the first shots showed a fan waving a large flag back and forth.

'It seemed to come right into the room and I had to resist the urge to reach out and touch it.'

In America, an NFL football match was recently broadcast live in cinemas and in Japan cable stations are showing 3D programmes four times a day.

Pixar, the animation studio that made Toy Story and The Incredibles, has announced that from next year all its films will be produced in the 3D format.

The Bill Nobody Noticed: National DNA Databank

In April of 2008, President Bush signed into law S.1858 which allows the federal government to screen the DNA of all newborn babies in the U.S. This was to be implemented within 6 months meaning that this collection is now being carried out. Congressman Ron Paul states that this bill is the first step towards the establishment of a national DNA database.

S.1858, known as The Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act of 2007, is justified as a "national contingency plan" in that it represents preparation for any sort of public health emergency. The bill states that the federal government should "continue to carry out, coordinate, and expand research in newborn screening" and "maintain a central clearinghouse of current information on newborn screening... ensuring that the clearinghouse is available on the Internet and is updated at least quarterly". Sections of the bill also make it clear that DNA may be used in genetic experiments and tests.

Twila Brase, president of the Citizens' Council on Health Care warns that this new law represents the beginning of nationwide genetic testing. Brase states that S.1858 and H.R. 3825, the House version of the bill, will:

• Establish a national list of genetic conditions for which newborns and children are to be tested.
• Establish protocols for the linking and sharing of genetic test results nationwide.
• Build surveillance systems for tracking the health status and health outcomes of individuals diagnosed at birth with a genetic defect or trait.
• Use the newborn screening program as an opportunity for government agencies to identify, list, and study "secondary conditions" of individuals and their families.
• Subject citizens to genetic research without their knowledge or consent.

Brase states that under this bill, "The DNA taken at birth from every citizen is essentially owned by the government, and every citizen becomes a potential subject of government-sponsored genetic research." All 50 states are now routinely providing results of genetic screenings to the Department of Homeland Security and this bill will establish the legality of that practice plus include DNA.

Ron Paul has also vigorously argued against this bill making the following comments before the US House of Representatives:
"I cannot support legislation...that exceeds the Constitutional limitations on federal power or in any way threatens the liberty of the American people. I must oppose it."

"S. 1858 gives the federal bureaucracy the authority to develop a model newborn screening program. Madame Speaker, the federal government lacks both the constitutional authority and the competence to develop a newborn screening program adequate for a nation as large and diverse as the United States. …"

"Those of us in the medical profession should be particularly concerned about policies allowing government officials and state-favored interests to access our medical records without our consent … My review of S. 1858 indicates the drafters of the legislation made no effort to ensure these newborn screening programs do not violate the privacy rights of parents and children, in fact, by directing federal bureaucrats to create a contingency plan for newborn screening in the event of a 'public health' disaster, this bill may lead to further erosions of medical privacy. As recent history so eloquently illustrates, politicians are more than willing to take, and people are more than willing to cede, liberty during times of 'emergency."

Solider of the Future

www.nypost.com

It's the year 2030. As a soldier enters a crowded marketplace, sensors mounted on his helmet automatically scan faces in the crowd, identifying a known insurgent; a cursor in the heads-up display highlights the target and cues the weapon, which can be set to stun or kill; a simple voice command unlocks the trigger.

Aided by "smart drugs," enhanced with prosthetics, and protected by a lightweight suit of armor, this soldier of the future possesses near super-human capabilities and weapons that would make even Iron Man jealous. He's suited up in an "exoskeleton" - essentially a Storm Trooper-esque external shell - that allows him to carry heavy loads. Electronics integrated in his outfit allow for simultaneous language translation, automatic identification of potential foes, and video-game-like targeting. If the soldier is tired, overworked, or injured, neural and physiological sensors automatically send an alert to headquarters.

It's all part of the Army's starry-eyed vision of grunts 20 years from now, and it's just one aspect of the Pentagon's ambitious thinking about technologies that will transform the way the military fights. There are also plans for advanced robotic aircraft; missiles that travel seven times the speed of sound; and ship- and aircraft-based laser weapons that could blast missiles out of the sky.

These aren't fantasy. Many of these technologies are plausible, or in development. Whether the military can afford them is an entirely different question.

Each branch of the military has its own plans, but the Army concept of tomorrow's soldier borrows heavily from nearly every genre of science fiction. Dubbed "Future Soldier 2030," the vision is the brainchild of the Natick Soldier Systems Center in Massachusetts, an Army organization responsible for researching and developing new technologies for the individual fighter.

The idea driving this vision is a "soldier as a system," a sort of man-as-machine concept that looks at soldiers as you would an aircraft or tank. "We're building an F-16 [fighter] on legs," says Natick's Dutch DeGay. Does that vision run the risk of making soldier look like some sort of science fiction villain? DeGay notes the Army is aware of this potential pitfall: "We work hard to be cognizant of what the overall ensemble looks like." While some of the technologies are already under development - prototype exoskeletons exist, for example - others, such as an elaborate, light-weight power system needed to power all these fancy gadgets, are still many years away. There are also some provocative ideas behind the plans: the Army envisions "neural prosthetics" and drugs that aid cognitive ability. Such things may be "controversial now, but perhaps ubiquitous in 2030," officials note.

With all those advanced sensors, electronics, and weapons systems, such a suit, the Army realizes, would be a potential bonanza for enemies if captured. For that possibility, the Army has another solution: If a soldier is killed, the outfit will "zeroize" itself - that is, wipe out its own electronic systems - so the equipment can't be exploited by enemy forces.

Beyond individual soldiers, the Pentagon has other big ideas: the Air Force, for example, is working on a hypersonic missile that could strike anywhere in the world in less than an hour; a prototype, dubbed the X-51 "waverider," will be flight tested later this year. Laser weapons are also popular. The Pentagon plans for a megawatt-class laser that would fit on the nose cone of a Boeing 747 and capable of blasting North Korean or Iranian ballistic missiles out of the sky. After over a decade of work, the Pentagon plans to finally test the weapon against missiles later this year. The Navy is also working on its own missile-blasting weapon that would go on ships, called the Free Electron Laser.

Another major initiative for the future is replacing manned aircraft with drones. In Pakistan, for example, armed Predator drones are conducting air strikes that would have once been carried out only by piloted aircraft. But these unmanned aircraft are still ultimately controlled by human operators. In the pipeline are armed drones that could operate with no human intervention. Northrop Grumman is working on a Navy-funded project called the X-47B, which would take off and land from carriers ships, and Boeing recently unveiled Phantom Ray, another unmanned combat aircraft that the company hopes will interest the Air Force.

This is not to say that that the future military will necessarily be equipped with the latest and greatest in weaponry. With the costs of weapons skyrocketing, and the Pentagon under pressure to fund ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of the military's big ideas have simply proved too costly. The Army's Future Combat System, a $160 billion program that included robots, sensors, drones and ground vehicles, is now slated for cancellation.

Likewise, the Navy's dreams for its future fleet have been dramatically scaled back. And the Air Force's plans for a new bomber are also on the chopping block, another victim of the latest round of cutbacks in the new Pentagon budget. Even equipment for the commander-in-chief is in jeopardy: the Navy recently canceled plans to buy a fleet of new presidential helicopters.

So how much, for example, would the outfit for the future soldier of 2030 cost and can the Army really afford it? The Army won't say. Although many of the component technologies are under development through various research efforts, the Army isn't actually putting any money into the full ensemble yet. But history may be a guide. One of the Army's more recent attempts to create a high-technology soldier outfit, called the "Land Warrior System," produced mixed results and a price tag of over $30,000 each. After spending over 10 years and half a billion dollars, the Army was forced to scale back or cancel many of the technologies.

That brings to mind an old joke that cynics use about all-ambitious technologies, be they laser weapons, hypersonic missiles, or super-human soldier suits: These are the weapons of the future - and they always will be.

IDF developing battlefield robot snake

jpost.com/

A robot snake, capable of recording video and sound on the battlefield, is on the way to join the the IDF's hi-tech arsenal.

The spying robot, which is about two meters long and covered in military camouflage, mimics the movements and appearance of real snakes, slithering around through caves, tunnels, cracks and buildings, while at the same time sending images and sound back to a soldier who controls the device through a laptop computer.

Able to bend its joints so well that it can squeeze through very tight spaces, the new device will be used to find people buried under collapsed buildings. The snake is also able to arch its body, allowing it to see over obstacles through its head camera.

Researchers studied the movements of live snakes in order to create the most natural and realistic robotic version.

The snake's cost has yet to be determined, as it is still being developed; however, according to Channel 2, the IDF plans to provide combat units with these devices.

Besides recording multimedia, the snake may also be used to carry explosives.

The Defense Ministry, with experts from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, based their intelligence-gathering robot on a previous project of Ben-Gurion University, which created a slew of robotic animals with special abilities.

The Ben-Gurion report also detailed other robot animals, including, a cat that climbs walls using its claws, and a "dog-droid" that responds to the human movements.

The idea of serpent-like robots is nothing new in the world of technology. Shigeo Hirose, a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, has been working on "serpent robots" since the 1970s.

Hirose's ACM-R5 robot, which had the ability to glide through water, unlike the IDF version, debuted in the 2005 World Exposition in Aichi, Japan.

Cash to become extinct as chips take off

news.com.au/

Cash is accelerating down the path to extinction as new technologies threaten to mark the end of loose change within a decade.

Bank and credit union bosses say cash won't be alone, with wallets and credit cards also likely to disappear too.

They told The Advertiser's round table forum that cash and cards will be replaced by computer chips embedded in mobile phones, watches or other portable devices.

Australian Central chief executive Peter Evers believes cash will be replaced for most transactions in five-to-seven years.

"Cash will disappear as there will be other forms of carrying cash, stored value in your phone or whatever it might be. It will transfer automatically," he said.

If you go in to Hong Kong or Singapore, the low-value transactions have already disappeared. You can't go anywhere, like on public transport, without pre-purchasing a card.

"I think the Australian Payment Systems Board is very much on top of it and is trying to move down a path, but hasn't publicly put things into place yet."

BankSA general manager strategy and operations Chris Ward expects Australia to follow the offshore lead, with small cash transactions disappearing first.

"So you can't go and buy a bottle of water from the deli with cash; you've got to go and buy it with your chip," he said.

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank state manager SA/NT John Oliver said it was easier for retailers to use electronic transactions than manual cash transactions.

Savings & Loans chief executive Greg Connor said the concept of the wallet would go.

"Whereas now we have a wallet and purse, it will be a chip in your phone or your watch or something like that as your access," he said.

Mr Evers said credit cards were on the way out as well.

"The access to credit is still going to be there through the mobile phone, but you don't need the card because that's really only a means of identification," he said.

"There could be another way of identifying, but the product, revolving credit, will still sit there."

March of the killer robots

telegraph.co.uk

It's the most realistic shoot-'em-up game ever. The player has a choice of two planes: a Predator with two Hellfire missiles, or a Reaper with 14. The action takes place in the Middle East, where you can attack villages and kill the inhabitants with impunity. But don't bother looking for it in the shops: to play this deadly game, you'll have to travel to Creech Air Force base in the Nevada desert. That's because the planes are real, and so are the casualties.

The first time a Predator made a kill was in Yemen, in 2002, when the CIA used it to destroy a vehicle carrying an al-Qaeda leader and five of his associates. The fleet now stands at around 200 craft, which have flown more than 400,000 combat hours. The company that makes them, General Atomics, can't keep up with the demand. The bigger, badder version – the Reaper hunter-killer – is also flying off the shelves. There are now around 30 in active service, with the first kill taking place in the mountains of Afghanistan in October 2007.

In every field of warfare, mechanical soldiers are fighting alongside – or instead of – human beings. Apart from unmanned combat air vehicles such as Predators, the skies above Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are filled with drones carrying out surveillance operations. On the ground are between 6,000 and 12,000 robots, up from a mere 150 in 2004. Their role is mostly to protect our soldiers by disrupting improvised explosive devices, or to carry out surveillance of dangerous places such as caves and buildings.

Our image of such robots owes a great deal to films – most notably The Terminator or Transformers, both of which have sequels out this month. But the actual models being used are more like miniature tanks, similar to the contraptions seen on the television series Robot Wars. The most popular is the PackBot made by the US company iRobot, which is normally used for bomb disposal. As the company started out making robotic vacuum cleaners known as Roombas, the 18kg PackBot is sometimes jokingly referred to as the "Roomba of doom" or "Doomba" – much to the displeasure of the firm's management, who would clearly hope to keep the two brands separate.

Recently, iRobot joined forces with Taser International to mount the allegedly non-lethal weapons on the "bots". But that pales in comparison with the ordnance that comes with the Talon, a larger device made by Foster-Miller, a US subsidiary of the British firm QinetiQ. It comes with chemical, gas, temperature and radiation sensors and can be mounted with a choice of grenade launcher, machine gun, incendiary weapon or 50-calibre rifle. Its bigger brother, the MAARS robot, ups the stakes with a tanklike turret.

Despite planned cutbacks in spending on conventional weapons, the Obama administration is increasing its budget for robotics: in 2010, the US Air Force will be given $2.13 billion for unmanned technology, including $489.24 million to procure 24 heavily armed Reapers. The US Army plans to spend $2.13 billion on unmanned vehicle technology, including 36 more Predators, while the Navy and Marine Corps will spend $1.05 billion, part of which will go on armed MQ-8B helicopters.

Of course, when the military describes such systems as "unmanned", it is stretching the truth very slightly. At the moment, all the armed robots in the Middle East are remote-controlled by humans – there is a "man in the loop" to control them and to decide when and whether to apply lethal force.

But that makes very little difference to villagers in Waziristan, where there have been repeated Predator strikes since 2006, many of them controlled from Creech Air Force Base, thousands of miles away. According to reports coming out of Pakistan, these have killed 14 al-Qaeda leaders and more than 600 civilians.

Such widespread collateral damage suggests that the human remote-controllers are not doing a very good job of restraining their robotic servants. In fact, the role of the "man in the loop" is becoming vanishingly small, and will disappear. "Our decision power [as controllers] is really only to give a veto," argues Peter Singer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC. "And, if we are honest with ourselves, it is a veto power we are often unable or unwilling to exercise because we only have a half-second to react."

As Dyke Weatherington, deputy director of the Pentagon's Unmanned Aerial Systems Task Force, points out: "There's really no way that a system that is remotely controlled can effectively operate in an offensive or defensive air combat environment. The requirement of that is a fully autonomous system."

Sure enough, plans are well under way to develop robots that can locate and destroy targets without human intervention. There are already a number of autonomous ground vehicles, such as the seven-ton "Crusher" developed by DARPA, the US military's research agency. BAE Systems, a British defence contractor, recently reported that it had "completed a flying trial which, for the first time, demonstrated the co-ordinated control of multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles autonomously completing a series of tasks". The Israelis are already fielding autonomous radar-killer drones known as Harpy and Harop, and the South Koreans use lethal autonomous systems to defend their border with the North.

Many in the military are enthusiastic about such developments. "They don't get hungry. They're not afraid. They don't forget their orders," says Dr Gordon Johnson, of the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command. "Will they do a better job than humans? Yes."

Dr Johnson insists that "there are no legal prohibitions against robots making life-and-death decisions", adding: "The US military will have these kinds of robots. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when."

The problem, however, is that no autonomous robots or artificial intelligence systems have the necessary capabilities to discriminate between combatants and innocents. Compared with the robots in the Terminator films, they suffer from artificial stupidity. Allowing them to make decisions about who to kill falls foul of the fundamental ethical precepts of the laws of war set up to protect civilians, the sick and wounded, the mentally ill and captives. We are already overreaching the technology and stretching the laws of war.

"Unless we end war, end capitalism and end science, the use of robots will only grow," says Peter Singer. "We are building and using machines with more and more autonomy because they are viewed by militaries as useful for war, and viewed by companies as profitable business." Spending on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles is expected to exceed tens of billions of dollars over the next 10 years, and more than 40 countries – including Russia and China – now have their own programmes.

Amid this robotic arms race, there is a sliver of hope. Professor Ron Arkin, of the Georgia Institute of Technology, believes that humans do not have the time to make rational ethical decisions in the modern battlefield. "There appears to be little alternative," he says, "to the use of more dispassionate autonomous decision-making machinery." He has funding from the US Army for research on how to programme ethical rules into robots to stop them causing excessive collateral damage. But this does not get around the problem of how to discriminate between innocents and combatants – and Arkin admits that the technology to fully support his system may not be available for 25 years.

The problem is that it is not just a matter of developing adequate sensors. In complex wars, complex human reasoning is often needed to decide when it is appropriate to kill. Robots do not feel anger or seek revenge – but they also don't have sympathy, empathy, remorse or shame. Nor can they be held accountable for their actions. In subcontracting our wars to our robotic creations, we are abdicating moral responsibility, too.

Are You Being Watched?

newsweek.com

At first glance, there was nothing special about the blimp floating high above the cars and crowd at this year's Indy 500 on Memorial Day weekend. Like most airships, it acted as an advertising vehicle; this time for the Fisher House, a charity focused on helping injured veterans and their families. But the real promo should have been for the blimp's creator, Raytheon, the security company best known for its weapons systems. Hidden inside the 55-foot-long white balloon was a powerful surveillance camera adapted from the technology Raytheon provides the U.S. military. Essentially an unmanned drone, the blimp transmitted detailed images to the race's security officers and to Indiana police. "The airship is great because it doesn't have that Big Brother feel, or create feelings of invasiveness," says Lee Silvestre, vice president of mission innovation in Raytheon's Integrated Defense division. "But it's still a really powerful security tool."

Until recently, Raytheon's eye-in-the-sky technology was used in Afghanistan and Iraq to guard American military bases, working as airborne guards against any oncoming desert threat. Using infrared sensors and a map overlay not unlike Google Earth, the technology scans a large area, setting important landmarks (say, the perimeter of a military base), and constantly relays video clips back to a command center. If a gun fires or a bomb is detonated, the airships can detect the noise and focus the camera—all from a mighty-high 500 feet.

After the success of the Indy 500 trial, the company is targeting police departments and sporting facilities that want to keep an eye on crowds that might easily morph into an unruly mob. "Large municipalities could find many uses for this [technology] once we figure out how to get it in their hands," says Nathan Kennedy, the blimp's project manager.

For now, cost might be the only thing preventing a blimp from appearing over your head. Raytheon won't disclose how much the system may eventually cost, but chances are it won't be cheap. For municipalities without a Pentagon-size police budget, the blimps' potential to display ads may assist with financing. Raytheon says local authorities could install a built-in LED screen to attract sponsors, generate revenue and defer operating costs.

But what about privacy and civil-rights concerns? Raytheon argues that its technology is no different than what's already watching us on a daily basis: street cameras, cop cars, helicopters and foot patrols. "No new information is being picked up by the airships, necessarily," Silvestre says. "We're just incorporating lots of different feeds to provide a quick, complete picture; integration is the key here."

Is Your Cell Phone Spying On You?

newsweek.com

Don't talk: your cell phone may be eavesdropping. Thanks to recent developments in "spy phone" software, a do-it-yourself spook can now wirelessly transfer a wiretapping program to any mobile phone. The programs are inexpensive, and the transfer requires no special skill. The would-be spy needs to get his hands on your phone to press keys authorizing the download, but it takes just a few minutes—about the time needed to download a ringtone.

This new generation of -user-friendly spy-phone software has become widely available in the last year—and it confers stunning powers. The latest programs can silently turn on handset microphones even when no call is being made, allowing a spy to listen to voices in a room halfway around the world. Targets are none the wiser: neither call logs nor phone bills show records of the secretly transmitted data.

More than 200 companies sell spy-phone software online, at prices as low as $50 (a few programs cost more than $300). Vendors are loath to release sales figures. But some experts—private investigators and consultants in counter-wiretapping, computer-security software and telecommunications market research—claim that a surprising number of people carry a mobile that has been compromised, usually by a spouse, lover, parent or co-worker. Many employees, experts say, hope to discover a supervisor's dishonest dealings and tip off the top boss anonymously. Max Maiellaro, head of Agata Christie Investigation, a private-investigation firm in Milan, estimates that 3 percent of mobiles in France and Germany are tapped, and about 5 percent or so in Greece, Italy, Romania and Spain. James Atkinson, a spy-phone expert at Granite Island Group, a security consultancy in Gloucester, Massachusetts, puts the number of tapped phones in the U.S. at 3 percent. (These approximations do not take into account government wiretapping.) Even if these numbers are inflated, clearly many otherwise law-abiding citizens are willing to break wiretapping laws.

Spyware thrives on iPhones, BlackBerrys and other smart phones because they have ample processing power. In the United States, the spread of GSM networks, which are more vulnerable than older technologies, has also enlarged the pool of potential victims. Spyware being developed for law-enforcement agencies will accompany a text message and automatically install itself in the victim's phone when the message is opened, according to an Italian developer who declined to be identified. One worry is that the software will find its way into the hands of criminals.

The current predicament is partly the result of decisions by Apple, Microsoft and Research In Motion (producer of the BlackBerry) to open their phones to outside application-software developers, which created the opening for spyware. Antivirus and security programs developed for computers require too much processing power, even for smart phones. Although security programs are available for phones, by and large users haven't given the threat much thought. If the spying keeps spreading, that may change soon.

Welcome to the nation's most closely watched small city

latimes.com

Lancaster, Pa. -- This historic town, where America's founding fathers plotted during the Revolution and Milton Hershey later crafted his first chocolates, now boasts another distinction.

It may become the nation's most closely watched small city.

Some 165 closed-circuit TV cameras soon will provide live, round-the-clock scrutiny of nearly every street, park and other public space used by the 55,000 residents and the town's many tourists. That's more outdoor cameras than are used by many major cities, including San Francisco and Boston.

Unlike anywhere else, cash-strapped Lancaster outsourced its surveillance to a private nonprofit group that hires civilians to tilt, pan and zoom the cameras -- and to call police if they spot suspicious activity. No government agency is directly involved.

Perhaps most surprising, the near-saturation surveillance of a community that saw four murders last year has sparked little public debate about whether the benefits for law enforcement outweigh the loss of privacy.

"Years ago, there's no way we could do this," said Keith Sadler, Lancaster's police chief. "It brings to mind Big Brother, George Orwell and '1984.' It's just funny how Americans have softened on these issues."

"No one talks about it," agreed Scott Martin, a Lancaster County commissioner who wants to expand the program. "Because people feel safer. Those who are law-abiding citizens, they don't have anything to worry about."

A few dozen people attended four community meetings held last spring to discuss what sponsors called "this exciting public safety initiative." But opposition has grown since big red bulbs, which shield the video cameras, began appearing on corner after corner.

Mary Pat Donnellon, head of Mission Research, a local software company, vowed to move if she finds one on her block. "I don't want to live like that," she said. "I'm not afraid. And I don't need to be under surveillance."

"No one has the right to know who goes in and out my front door," agreed David Mowrer, a laborer for a company that supplies quarry pits. "That's my business. That's not what America is about."

Hundreds of municipalities -- including Los Angeles and at least 36 other California cities -- have built or expanded camera networks since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In most cases, Department of Homeland Security grants helped cover the cost.

In the most ambitious project, New York City police announced plans several years ago to link 3,000 public and private security cameras across Lower Manhattan designed to help deter, track and detect terrorists. The network is not yet complete.

How they affect crime is open to debate. In the largest U.S. study, researchers at UC Berkeley evaluated 71 cameras that San Francisco put in high-crime areas starting in 2005. Their final report, released in December, found "no evidence" of a drop in violent crime but "substantial declines" in property crime near the cameras.

Only a few communities have said no. In February, the city council in Cambridge, Mass., voted not to use eight cameras already purchased with federal funds for fear police would improperly spy on residents. Officials in nearby Brookline are considering switching off a dozen cameras for the same reason.

Lancaster is different, and not just because it sits amid the rolling hills and rich farms of Pennsylvania Dutch country.

Laid out in 1730, the whole town is 4 square miles around a central square. Amish families still sell quilts in the nation's oldest public market, and the Wal-Mart provides a hitching post to park a horse and buggy. Tourists flock to art galleries and Colonial-era churches near a glitzy new convention center.

But poverty is double the state's average, and public school records list more than 900 children as homeless. Police blame most of last year's 3,638 felony crimes, chiefly thefts, on gangs that use Lancaster as a way station to move cocaine, heroin and other illegal drugs along the Eastern Seaboard.

"It's not like we're making headlines as the worst crime-ridden city in the country," said Craig Stedman, the county's district attorney. "We have an average amount of crime for our size."

In 2001, a local crime commission concluded that cameras might make the city safer. Business owners, civic boosters and city officials formed the Lancaster Community Safety Coalition, and the nonprofit organization installed its first camera downtown in 2004.

Raising money from private donors and foundations, the coalition had set up 70 cameras by last year. And the crime rate rose.

Officials explained the increase by saying cameras caught lesser offenses, such as prostitution and drunkenness, that otherwise often escape prosecution. The cameras also helped police capture and convict a murderer, and solve several other violent crimes.

Another local crime meeting last year urged an expansion of the video network, and the city and county governments agreed to share the $3-million cost with the coalition. Work crews are trying to connect 95 additional high-resolution cameras by mid-July.

"Per capita, we're the most watched city in the state, if not the entire United States," said Joseph Morales, a city councilman who is executive director of the coalition. "There are very few public streets that are not visible to our cameras."

The digital video is transmitted to a bank of flat-screen TVs at coalition headquarters, several dingy offices beside a gas company depot. A small sign hangs outside.

On a recent afternoon, camera operator Doug Winglewich sat at a console and watched several dozen incoming video feeds plus a computer linked to the county 911 dispatcher. The cameras have no audio, so he works in silence.

Each time police logged a new 911 call, he punched up the camera closest to the address, and pushed a joystick to maneuver in for a closer look.

A license plate could be read a block away, and a face even farther could be identified. After four years in the job, Winglewich said, he "can pretty much tell right away if someone's up to no good."

He called up another feed and focused on a woman sitting on the curb. "You get to know people's faces," he said. "She's been arrested for prostitution."

Moments later, he called police when he spotted a man drinking beer in trouble-prone Farnum Park. Two police officers soon appeared on the screen, and as the camera watched, issued the man a ticket for violating a local ordinance.

"Lots of times, the police find outstanding warrants and the guy winds up in jail," said Winglewich, 49, who works from a wheelchair on account of a spinal injury.

If a camera records a crime in progress, the video is given to police and prosecutors, and may be subpoenaed by defense lawyers in a criminal case. More than 300 tapes were handed over last year, records show.

Morales says he refuses all other requests. "The divorce lawyer who wants video of a husband coming out of a bar with his mistress, we won't do it," he said.

No state or federal law governs use of public cameras, so Morales is drafting ethical guidelines for the coalition's 10 staffers and dozen volunteers. Training has been "informal" until now, he said, but will be stiffened.

Morales said he tries to weed out voyeurs and anyone who might use the tapes for blackmail or other illegal activity.

"We are not directly responsible to law enforcement or government at this point," he said. "So we have to be above suspicion ourselves."

Morales, 45, has a master's degree in public administration. Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., he grew up mostly on Army bases. He was accepted to the U.S. Naval Academy, he said, but turned it down. "I made a lot of bad choices," he said. "Substance abuse was part of that."

Mary Catherine Roper, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, says the coalition's role as a self-appointed, self-policed gatekeeper for blanket surveillance of an entire city is unique.

"This is the first time, the only time, I've heard of it anywhere," she said. "It is such a phenomenally bad idea that it is stunning to me."

She said the coalition structure provides no public oversight or accountability, and may be exempt from state laws governing release of public records.

"When I hear people off the street can come in and apply to watch the camera on my street, now I'm terrified," she added. "That could be my nosy neighbor, or my stalker ex-boyfriend, or a burglar stalking my home."

J. Richard Gray, Lancaster's mayor since 2005, backs the program but worries about such abuses. He is a former defense attorney, a self-described civil libertarian, and a free-spirited figure who owns 12 motorcycles.

"I keep telling [the coalition] you're on a short leash with me," Gray said. "It's one strike and you're out as far as I'm concerned."

His campaign treasurer, Larry Hinnenkamp, a tax attorney and certified public accountant, took a stronger view. He "responded with righteous indignation" when a camera was installed without prior notice by his home.

"I used to give it the finger when I walked by," Hinnenkamp said.

But Jack Bauer, owner of the city's largest beer and soft drink distributor, calls the network "a great thing." His store hasn't been robbed, he said, since four cameras went up nearby.

"There's nothing wrong with instilling fear," he said.

RFID could be in all cell phones by 2010

news.zdnet.com/

All cell phones will come packed with an RFID chip by next summer — giving your phone the possibility of also becoming the keys to your car or house.

That was the prediction of Ericsson's vice-president of systems architecture, Håkan Djuphammar, speaking at the company's Business Innovation Forum in Stockholm on Tuesday.

He told delegates: "A year from now, basically every new phone sold will have [near field communication]. It's a two-way, bio-directional RFID communication link that makes this device work as a tag or reader."

Djuphammar said devices with RFID chips will have a secure environment on the SIM card, where "trusted identities" or "secure elements" can be downloaded. This will enable phones to take on other roles, such as the keys for your car or house, or a credit card or concert ticket. He said Ericsson is working with a utilities company that has 700 separate unmanned facilities and around 15,000 keys — a logistical nightmare it wants to eliminate via the use of RFID-enabled mobiles.

"They don't know really where those keys are, so they want to replace all the locks with RFID locks, put RFID-capable phones in the hands of all their personnel, and then they can control the access to these sites."

Using RFID in this way would enable a mobile to be assigned to open a door for a certain period of time only, meaning the company could better manage access to its facilities, while also replacing the hassle of dealing with thousands of physical keys.

"All sorts of things will be enabled by [RFID] — a small piece of technology, but with an ecosystem around it that opens up tremendous opportunities for innovation," Djuphammar added.

Mobile phones could also become instruments of fraud detection. Djuphammar said credit card companies could make use of mobile user location data and IP mapping to ascertain whether a transaction is taking place in the vicinity of the official card holder, thereby judging whether the transaction is likely to be genuine or not.

"In some countries, there's a lot of credit card fraud, so it is in the interest of the issuer to be able to match the position of the phone that belongs to the person who has a card. If the phone is close to where the card is used, the fraud risk is low. But if the phone suddenly moves away from where the card is used, the issuer can be alerted to check that particular transaction — it's most likely fraud, because now the phone and the card are separated," he explained.

Another example of leveraging location data is to create real-time road traffic maps generated by analysing the speed of the mobile phone base station hand-off to ascertain how fast cars are travelling. This data could then be sold to GPS device companies, enabling them to provide dynamic travel information to motorists.

Djuphammar said selling access to mobile user information in this way would open up new revenue streams in a "win-win" scenario for all parties involved — the end user, the operator and the broker who manages the sharing of that user data.

"That is a typical win-win, where the operators share their assets/knowledge through a broker and the GPS company can sell a service to the end user. The end user wins, the GPS service provider wins, the broker provider wins and the operator wins," he added.

Bluetooth "Big Brother" tracks festival-goers

reuters.com/

Researchers are using Bluetooth technology to observe the meanderings of tens of thousands of festival-goers at a top European rock festival, hoping their findings will launch a new generation of tracking devices.

The team from the University of Ghent in Belgium believes the research could yield new satellite navigation applications for the retail and security sectors.

"We have installed 36 Bluetooth scanners across the site and along a few surrounding roads, as well as bus stops," the university's Nico Van de Weghe said on Friday of the project at the Werchter festival, northeast of Brussels this weekend.

Within a radius of 30 meters, the scanners track mobile phones equipped with Bluetooth, a type of short-range wireless technology which allows different devices to connect with one another, often to transfer files.

But the masses flocking to see Coldplay, Kings of Leon or Metallica need not worry about their privacy, Van de Weghe said.

The researchers will only track the devices' MAC address -- a number that identifies each device on a network -- which cannot be traced to phone numbers or personal details.

"Werchter is a very interesting case," Van de Weghe told Reuters, adding that this is the first time his team, working on a wider research project using new technology to track moving objects, will collect full data on a live situation.

The team is carrying out research on geographical information systems, such as satellite navigation systems, and is hoping to be able to track moving objects in real time.

"Tracking movements via Bluetooth could become very interesting. It could help retailers keep track of the number of customers numbers at different times, " Van de Weghe said.

The technique could also be used by security services to track suspicious movements, or monitor evacuations at mass events.

Some 80,000 people from across Europe attended a sweltering first day of the festival in the small town of Werchter, 40 km (25 miles) northeast of Brussels, on Thursday, with thousands more expected on Friday and over the weekend.

India to issue all 1.2 billion citizens with biometric ID cards

timesonline.co.uk/

It is surely the biggest Big Brother project yet conceived. India is to issue each of its 1.2 billion citizens, millions of whom live in remote villages and possess no documentary proof of existence, with cyber-age biometric identity cards.

The Government in Delhi recently created the Unique Identification Authority, a new state department charged with the task of assigning every living Indian an exclusive number. It will also be responsible for gathering and electronically storing their personal details, at a predicted cost of at least £3 billion.

The task will be led by Nandan Nilekani, the outsourcing sage who coined the phrase “the world is flat”, which became a mantra for supporters of globalisation. “It is a humongous, mind-boggling challenge,” he told The Times. “But we have the opportunity to give every Indian citizen, for the first time, a unique identity. We can transform the country.”

If the cards were piled on top of each other they would be 150 times as high as Mount Everest — 1,200 kilometres.

India’s legions of local bureaucrats currently issue at least 20 proofs of identity, including birth certificates, driving licences and ration cards. None is accepted universally and moving from one state to the next can easily render a citizen officially invisible — a disastrous predicament for the millions of poor who rely on state handouts to survive.

It is hoped that the ID scheme will close such bureaucratic black holes while also fighting corruption. It may also be put to more controversial ends, such as the identification of illegal immigrants and tackling terrorism. A computer chip in each card will contain personal data and proof of identity, such as fingerprint or iris scans. Criminal records and credit histories may also be included.

Mr Nilekani, who left Infosys, the outsourcing giant that he co-founded, to take up his new job, wants the cards to be linked to a “ubiquitous online database” accessible from anywhere.

The danger, experts say, is that as one of the world’s largest stores of personal information, it will prove an irresistible target for identity thieves. “The database will be one of the largest that ever gets built,” Guru Malladi, a partner at Ernst & Young who was involved in an earlier pilot scheme, said. “It will have to be impregnable.”

Mr Nilekani will also have to mastermind a way of collecting trustworthy data. Only about 75 million people — or less than 7 per cent of the population — are registered to pay income tax. The Electoral Commission’s voter lists are thought to be largely inaccurate, not least because of manipulation by corrupt politicians.

He will also have to persuade as many as 60 government departments to co-operate. The Government has said that the first cards will be issued within 18 months. Analysts feel that it will take at least four years for the project to reach “critical mass”.

Such is the scale of the project that analysts believe India will have to develop a new electronics manufacturing base to supply information-storing servers, computer chips and card readers.

For the time being Mr Nilekani has more mundane matters on his mind. “I’ve only just left my previous job,” he said. “First I have to find a new office.”

Keeping tabs around the world

• Compulsory national identity cards are used in about 100 countries including Germany, France, Belgium, Greece, Luxembourg, Portugal and Spain

• ID cards are not used in the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the Irish Republic or Nordic countries

• German police can detain people who are not carrying their ID card for up to 24 hours

• The Bush Administration resisted calls for an identity card in the US after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001

• In Australia street protests in the 1980s forced the Government to abandon its plans for a card

• Plastic cards are favoured over paper documents because they are harder to forge

• Most identity cards contain the name, sex, date of birth and a unique number for the holder

• South Korean, Brazilian, Italian and Malaysian ID cards contain fingerprints. Cards in some countries contain information on any distinguishing marks of the holder

• Objections to card schemes have focused on the cost and invasion of privacy

• Supporters say that they prevent illegal immigration and fraud

• In the European Union some cards can be used instead of a passport for European travel

Monkey Moves Robot Using Mind Control

news.sky.com

A monkey fitted with a hi-tech brain chip has learned to move a complex robotic arm using mind control.

The chip implant allows the monkey to manipulate the arm by thought

The animal can operate the robot with such dexterity that it can reach out to grab, and turn a handle.

The mechanical arm has an arm, elbow, wrist and simple hand, which the monkey controls with the power of thought.

Sky News was given exclusive access to the laboratory at Pittsburgh University in the United States.

The research is progressing so rapidly that scientists hope to start trials on paralysed patients within a year.

Neurobiologist Dr Andy Schwartz said: "What we're trying to do is go to a very dextrous hand - where the functionality is very similar to the human hand. If we could help stroke patients there would be a huge market for this kind of device."

They also hope to help patients who have been paralysed by spinal chord injuries or degenerative diseases of the nervous system.

Electrodes implanted in the monkey's motor cortex, the brain's movement control centre, pick up pulses within individual neurones.

The signals are relayed to a computer which analyses their pattern and strength to gauge what the monkey is trying to do. It then translates the signals to alter the speed and direction of the robotic arm.

The system is so quick that if the arm overshoots the monkey's intended target, it can rapidly correct the movement.

Dr Schwartz told Sky News: "It's pretty amazing because monkeys aren't used to moving tools.

Monkeys known for their intelligence

"We use them all the time. Imagine you're moving your arm to get that piece of food. Conveying that to a monkey is pretty difficult, yet the monkey learns it fairly rapidly.

"As the days go by, you see the monkeys start using it as if it is part of their own body."

The monkey cannot feel the electrodes in its brain, and did not appear to be distressed by the wires leading from a socket on its head.

At Brown University in New England, scientists have just started the first clinical trials of a similar device. Braingate allows tetraplegic patients to control a computer cursor by thinking about moving their paralysed hand.

Matthew Nagel took part in the first tests of a prototype. Before he died of an unrelated infection, he described how the Braingate device gave him back some freedom.

"I can't put it into words. I just use my brain. I said: 'cursor go up to the top right' and it did. And now I can control it all over the screen. It's wild," he said.

The new trial will be on 15 patients. Scientists hope to prove that the technology is safe and effective enough to use on a wider scale.

Head of the research, Professor John Donoghue, said the ultimate aim is for patients to regain control of their own limbs, which are more sophisticated than any robotic arm.

He told Sky News: "Our goal with Braingate is to have a physical replacement for a broken biological nervous system.

"So we'd like to have a physical system that senses what's going on in the brain, takes those signals inside your body and routes them off to the muscles, so when you think, you move.

"That's just what you or I do, so one day you could be sitting here with a person and you wouldn't know if they had the system or not."

Governments will soon have, for the first time in history, the means to identify, monitor and track citizens anywhere in the world in real time

cbsnews.com/

Climbing into his Volvo, outfitted with a Matrics antenna and a Motorola reader he'd bought on eBay for $190, Chris Paget cruised the streets of San Francisco with this objective: To read the identity cards of strangers, wirelessly, without ever leaving his car.

It took him 20 minutes to strike hacker's gold.

Zipping past Fisherman's Wharf, his scanner detected, then downloaded to his laptop, the unique serial numbers of two pedestrians' electronic U.S. passport cards embedded with radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags. Within an hour, he'd "skimmed" the identifiers of four more of the new, microchipped PASS cards from a distance of 20 feet.

Embedding identity documents _ passports, drivers licenses, and the like _ with RFID chips is a no-brainer to government officials. Increasingly, they are promoting it as a 21st century application of technology that will help speed border crossings, safeguard credentials against counterfeiters, and keep terrorists from sneaking into the country.

But Paget's February experiment demonstrated something privacy advocates had feared for years: That RFID, coupled with other technologies, could make people trackable without their knowledge or consent.

He filmed his drive-by heist, and soon his video went viral on the Web, intensifying a debate over a push by government, federal and state, to put tracking technologies in identity documents and over their potential to erode privacy.

Putting a traceable RFID in every pocket has the potential to make everybody a blip on someone's radar screen, critics say, and to redefine Orwellian government snooping for the digital age.

"Little Brother," some are already calling it _ even though elements of the global surveillance web they warn against exist only on drawing boards, neither available nor approved for use.

But with advances in tracking technologies coming at an ever-faster rate, critics say, it won't be long before governments could be able to identify and track anyone in real time, 24-7, from a cafe in Paris to the shores of California.

The key to getting such a system to work, these opponents say, is making sure everyone carries an RFID tag linked to a biometric data file.

On June 1, it became mandatory for Americans entering the United States by land or sea from Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and the Caribbean to present identity documents embedded with RFID tags, though conventional passports remain valid until they expire.

Among new options are the chipped "e-passport," and the new, electronic PASS card _ credit-card sized, with the bearer's digital photograph and a chip that can be scanned through a pocket, backpack or purse from 30 feet.

Alternatively, travelers can use "enhanced" driver's licenses embedded with RFID tags now being issued in some border states: Washington, Vermont, Michigan and New York. Texas and Arizona have entered into agreements with the federal government to offer chipped licenses, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has recommended expansion to non-border states. Kansas and Florida officials have received DHS briefings on the licenses, agency records show.

The purpose of using RFID is not to identify people, says Mary Ellen Callahan, the chief privacy officer at Homeland Security, but rather "to verify that the identification document holds valid information about you."

Likewise, U.S. border agents are "pinging" databases only to confirm that licenses aren't counterfeited. "They're not pulling up your speeding tickets," she says, or looking at personal information beyond what is on a passport.

The change is largely about speed and convenience, she says. An RFID document that doubles as a U.S. travel credential "only makes it easier to pull the right record fast enough, to make sure that the border flows, and is operational" _ even though a 2005 Government Accountability Office report found that governmentRFID readers often failed to detect travelers' tags.

Such assurances don't persuade those who liken RFID-embedded documents to barcodes with antennas and contend they create risks to privacy that far outweigh the technology's heralded benefits. They warn it will actually enable identity thieves, stalkers and other criminals to commit "contactless" crimes against victims who won't immediately know they've been violated.

Neville Pattinson, vice president for government affairs at Gemalto, Inc., a major supplier of microchipped cards, is no RFID basher. He's a board member of the Smart Card Alliance, an RFID industry group, and is serving on the Department of Homeland Security's Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee.

Still, Pattinson has sharply criticized the RFIDs in U.S. driver's licenses and passport cards. In a 2007 article for the Privacy Advisor, a newsletter for privacy professionals, he called them vulnerable "to attacks from hackers, identity thieves and possibly even terrorists."

RFID, he wrote, has a fundamental flaw: Each chip is built to faithfully transmit its unique identifier "in the clear, exposing the tag number to interception during the wireless communication."

Once a tag number is intercepted, "it is relatively easy to directly associate it with an individual," he says. "If this is done, then it is possible to make an entire set of movements posing as somebody else without that person's knowledge."

Echoing these concerns were the AeA _ the lobbying association for technology firms _ the Smart Card Alliance, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Business Travel Coalition, and the Association of Corporate Travel Executives.

Meanwhile, Homeland Security has been promoting broad use of RFID even though its own advisory committee on data integrity and privacy warned that radio-tagged IDs have the potential to allow "widespread surveillance of individuals" without their knowledge or consent.

In its 2006 draft report, the committee concluded that RFID "increases risks to personal privacy and security, with no commensurate benefit for performance or national security," and recommended that "RFID be disfavored for identifying and tracking human beings."

For now, chipped PASS cards and enhanced driver's licenses are optional and not yet widely deployed in the United States. To date, roughly 192,000 EDLs have been issued in Washington, Vermont, Michigan and New York.

But as more Americans carry them "you can bet that long-range tracking of people on a large scale will rise exponentially," says Paget, a self-described "ethical hacker" who works as an Internet security consultant.

Could RFID numbers eventually become de facto identifiers of Americans, like the Social Security number?

Such a day is not far off, warns Katherine Albrecht, a privacy advocate and co-author of "Spychips," a book that is sharply critical of the use of RFID in consumer items and official ID documents.

"There's a reason you don't wear your Social Security number across your T-shirt," Albrecht says, "and beaming out your new, national RFID number in a 30-foot radius would be far worse."

There are no federal laws against the surreptitious skimming of Americans' RFID numbers, so it won't be long before people seek to profit from this, says Bruce Schneier, an author and chief security officer at BT, the British telecommunications operator.

Data brokers that compile computer dossiers on millions of individuals from public records, credit applications and other sources "will certainly maintain databases of RFID numbers and associated people," he says. "They'd do a disservice to their stockholders if they didn't."

But Gigi Zenk, a spokeswoman for the Washington state Department of Licensing, says Americans "aren't that concerned about the RFID, particularly in this day and age when there are a lot of other ways toaccess personal information on people."

Tracking an individual is much easier through a cell phone, or a satellite tag embedded in a car, she says. "An RFID that contains no private information, just a randomly assigned number, is probably one of the least things to be concerned about, frankly."

Still, even some ardent RFID supporters recognize that these next-generation RFID cards raise prickly questions.

Mark Roberti, editor of RFID Journal, an industry newsletter, recently acknowledged that as the use of RFID in official documents grows, the potential for abuse increases.

"A government could do this, for instance, to track opponents," he wrote in an opinion piece discussing Paget's cloning experiment. "To date, this type of abuse has not occurred, but it could if governments fail to take privacy issues seriously."
___

Imagine this: Sensors triggered by radio waves instructing cameras to zero in on people carrying RFID, unblinkingly tracking their movements.

Unbelievable? Intrusive? Outrageous?

Actually, it happens every day and makes people smile _ at the Alton Towers amusement park in Britain, which videotapes visitors who agree to wear RFID bracelets as they move about the facility, then sells the footage as a keepsake.

This application shows how the technology can be used effortlessly _ and benignly. But critics, noting it can also be abused, say federal authorities in the United States didn't do enough from the start to address that risk.

cont....

cont....

The first U.S. identity document to be embedded with RFID was the "e-passport."

In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks _ and the finding that some of the terrorists entered the United States using phony passports _ the State Department proposed mandating that Americans and foreign visitors carry "enhanced" passport booklets, with microchips embedded in the covers.

The chips, it announced, would store the holder's information from the data page, a biometric version of the bearer's photo, and receive special coding to prevent data from being altered.

In February 2005, when the State Department asked for public comment, it got an outcry: Of the 2,335 comments received, 98.5 percent were negative, with 86 percent expressing security or privacy concerns, the department reported in an October 2005 notice in the Federal Register.

"Identity theft was of grave concern," it stated, adding that "others expressed fears that the U.S. Government or other governments would use the chip to track and censor, intimidate or otherwise control or harm them."

It also noted that many Americans expressed worries "that the information could be read at distances in excess of 10 feet."

Those concerned citizens, it turns out, had cause.

According to department records obtained by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, under a Freedom of Information Act request and reviewed by the AP, discussion about security concerns with the e-passport occurred as early as January 2003 but tests weren't ordered until the department began receiving public criticism two years later.

When the AP asked when testing was initiated, the State Department said only that "a battery of durability and electromagnetic tests were performed" by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, along with tests "to measure the ability of data on electronic passports to be surreptitiously skimmed or for communications with the chip reader to be eavesdropped," testing which "led to additional privacy controls being placed on U.S. electronic passports ... "

Indeed, in 2005, the department incorporated metallic fibers into the e-passport's front cover, since metal can reduce the range at which RFID can be read. Personal information in the chips was encrypted and a cryptographic "key" added, which required inspectors to optically scan the e-passport first for the chip to communicate wirelessly.

he department also announced it would test e-passports with select employees, before giving them to the public. "We wouldn't be issuing the passports to ourselves if we didn't think they're secure," said Frank Moss, deputy assistant Secretary of State for passport services, in a CNN interview.

But what of Americans' concerns about the e-passport's read range?

In its October 2005 Federal Register notice, the State Department reassured Americans that the e-passport's chip _ the ISO 14443 tag _ would emit radio waves only within a 4-inch radius, making it tougher to hack.

Technologists in Israel and England, however, soon found otherwise. In May 2006, at the University of Tel Aviv, researchers cobbled together $110 worth of parts from hobbyists kits and directly skimmed an encrypted tag from several feet away. At the University of Cambridge, a student showed that a transmission between an e-passport and a legitimate reader could be intercepted from 160 feet.

The State Department, according to its own records obtained under FOIA, was aware of the problem months before its Federal Register notice and more than a year before the e-passport was rolled out in August 2006.

"Do not claim that these chips can only be read at a distance of 10 cm (4 inches)," Moss wrote in an April 22, 2005, e-mail to Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance. "That really has been proven to be wrong."

The chips could be skimmed from a yard away, he added _ all a hacker would need to read e-passport numbers, say, in an elevator or on a subway.

Other red flags went up. In February 2006, an encrypted Dutch e-passport was hacked on national television, with researchers gaining access to the document's digital photograph, fingerprint and personal data. Then British e-passports were hacked using a $500 reader and software written in less than 48 hours.

The State Department countered by saying European e-passports weren't as safe as their American counterparts because they lacked the cryptographic key and the anti-skimming cover.

But recent studies have shown that more powerful readers can penetrate even the metal sheathing in the U.S. e-passport's cover.

John Brennan, a senior policy adviser at the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs, concedes it may be possible for a reader to overpower the e-passport's protective shield from a distance.

However, he adds, "you could not do this in any large-scale, concerted fashion without putting a bunch of infrastructure in place to make it happen. The practical vulnerabilities may be far less than some of the theoretical scenarios that people have put out there."

That thinking is flawed, says Lee Tien, a senior attorney and surveillance expert with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which opposes RFID in identity documents.

It won't take a massive government project to build reader networks around the country, he says: They will grow organically, for commercial purposes, from convention centers to shopping malls, sports stadiums to college campuses. Federal agencies and law enforcement wouldn't have to control those networks; they already buy information about individuals from commercial data brokers.

"And remember," Tien adds, "technology always gets better ... "
___

With questions swirling around the e-passport's security, why then did the government roll out more RFID-tagged documents _ the PASS card and enhanced driver's license, which provide less protection against hackers?

The RFIDs in enhanced driver's licenses and PASS cards are nearly as slim as paper. Each contains a silicon computer chip attached to a wire antenna, which transmits a unique identifier via radio waves when "awakened" by an electromagnetic reader.

The technology they use is designed to track products through the supply chain. These chips, known as EPCglobal Gen 2, have no encryption, and minmal data protection features. They are intended to release their data to any inquiring Gen 2 reader within a 30-foot radius.

This might be appropriate when a supplier is tracking a shipment of toilet paper or dog food; but when personal information is at stake, privacy advocates ask: Is long-range readability truly desirable?

The departments of State and Homeland Security say remotely readable ID cards transmit only RFID numbers that correspond to records stored in government databases, which they say are secure. Even if a hacker were to copy an RFID number onto a blank tag and place it into a counterfeit ID, they say, the forger's face still wouldn't match the true cardholder's photo in the database, rendering it useless.

Still, computer experts such as Schneier say government databases can be hacked. Others worry about a day when hackers might deploy readers at "chokepoints," such as checkout lines, skim RFID numbers from people's driver's licenses, then pair those numbers to personal data skimmed from chipped credit cards (though credit cards are harder to skim). They imagine stalkers using skimmed RFID numbers to track their targets' comings and goings. They fear government agents will compile chip numbers at peace rallies, mosques or gun shows, simply by strolling through a crowd with a reader.

Others worry more about the linking of chips with other identification methods, including biometric technologies, such as facial recognition.

The International Civil Aviation Organization, the U.N. agency that sets global standards for passports, now calls for facial recognition in all scannable e-passports.

Should biometric technologies be coupled with RFID, "governments will have, for the first time in history, the means to identify, monitor and track citizens anywhere in the world in real time," says Mark Lerner, spokesman for the Constitutional Alliance, a network of nonprofit groups, lawmakers and citizens opposed to remotely readable identity and travel documents.

Implausible?

For now, perhaps. Radio tags in EDLs and passport cards can't be scanned miles away.

But scientists are working on technologies that might enable a satellite or a cell tower to scan a chip's contents. Critics also note advances in the sharpness of closed-circuit cameras, and point out they're increasingly ubiquitous. And more fingerprints, iris scans and digitized facial images are being stored in government databases. The FBI has announced plans to assemble the world's largest biometric database, nicknamed "Next Generation Identification."

"RFID's role is to make the collection and transmission of people's biometric data quick, easy and nonintrusive," says Lerner. "Think of it as the thread that ties together the surveillance package."

Welcome to Tiburon - Click - Every vehicle that crosses city limits to be recorded

sfgate.com/

Welcome to Tiburon - Click

Your presence has been noted.

The posh and picturesque town that juts into San Francisco Bay is poised to do something unprecedented: use cameras to record the license plate number of every vehicle that crosses city limits.

Some residents describe the plan as a commonsense way to thwart thieves, most of whom come from out of town. Others see an electronic border gate and worry that the project will only reinforce Tiburon's image of exclusivity and snootiness.

"I personally don't see too much harm in it, because I have nothing to hide," commodities broker Paul Lambert, 64, said after a trip to Boardwalk Market in downtown Tiburon on a recent afternoon.

"Yet," he said, "it still has the taint of Big Brother."

Tiburon's camera idea is a marriage of technology, policing and distinct geography.

Situated on a peninsula, Tiburon's hillside homes and waterfront shops are accessible by only two roads, allowing police to point the special cameras known as license plate readers at every lane that leads into and out of the town of 8,800.

The readers, which use character recognition software, can compare plates to databases of cars that have been stolen or linked to crimes, then immediately notify police of matches, said Police Chief Michael Cronin.

If someone burglarized a Tiburon home at 3 a.m. one morning, he said, detectives could consult the devices and find out who came to town in the hours before - and who rolled out soon after.

'Very low-key'

"It's very low-key," said Town Manager Peggy Curran. "The whole point of license plates is that people can be identified by them."

If the Town Council gives final approval, Curran said, officials hope to install the readers on Tiburon Boulevard and Paradise Drive by late fall.

Tiburon plans to spend grant funds on the project and ask two other governments that could benefit from it to contribute to an expected price tag of $100,000 - the city of Belvedere, a bump of land on the southeastern edge of Tiburon, and Marin County.

Cronin called it a sound investment. He pointed to a frustrating twist in Tiburon crime: Residents feel so safe that they don't lock their cars and homes.

In all of 2007 and 2008, Tiburon recorded 196 thefts, 37 burglaries and a dozen stolen cars. The chief said every alleged thief who was arrested in those years was from outside Tiburon.

Finding suspects

Once the street cameras are installed, Cronin said, hunting a burglary suspect could be easier. "We'll look for a plate that came and went," he said. "That's going to give us a very short list to work on."

Detectives could then check to see if any of the cars has been linked with crimes in the past. Between 300 and 400 cars use Tiburon Boulevard to travel in or out of the town from midnight to 6 a.m. on weekdays.

"It's much more efficient than having an officer sit on the boulevard, watch passing cars and guess who might be a burglar," Cronin said.

Nicole Ozer, who directs policy on technology for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, isn't as supportive. She called the cameras a "needle in a haystack" approach that may waste money, invade privacy and invite unfair profiling.

"To be under investigation simply because you entered or left Tiburon at a certain time is incredibly intrusive," Ozer said. "Innocent people should be able to go about their daily lives without being tracked and monitored."

City leaders promise to prevent abuses. Information on which cars enter and leave town will not be available to the public, they said, and will be erased within 60 days. Police officers will be granted access to the information only during an investigation.

License plate readers have exploded in popularity in recent years, but Tiburon would be one of the first to mount them at fixed locations - and perhaps the very first to record every car coming or going.

California Highway Patrol officials have put the readers on 18 cruisers and at four fixed locations. CHP officers have seen a huge increase in recoveries of stolen cars since the devices were installed starting in August 2005, the agency said.

Devices help CHP

Through December, officials said, the CHP had used the devices to recover 1,739 cars and arrest 675 people.

San Francisco gave the devices to police as well as parking control officers, allowing them to track cars parked for too long in one spot. Some cities use the cameras to assess anti-congestion tolls on motorists, while casino bosses get an alert when a high roller - or a cheater - pulls in.

Outside Tiburon's Boardwalk Market, where a flyer in the window offered a $2,000 reward for the return of a stolen Pomeranian, residents seemed split on the plan.

Robin Pryor, 66, of Belvedere said the most important issue was whether the cameras made people safer.

"It's just like locking your door," Pryor said. "If they have reason for it to bother them, they shouldn't be coming in."

But Fred Mayo, 62, who lives in Tiburon and owns a travel agency in Mill Valley, said the cameras would invade privacy. "Where does it end?" Mayo asked.

He referred to the crime blotter in the local newspaper, which listed two incidents recently of kids tossing water balloons at cars, and noted, "It's not like Tiburon's a high-crime area."

Quote from: grammyluv on July 18, 2009, 11:35:53 AM

Essentially it gives people a false sense of security, as Britain's ubiquitous security cameras have done nothing to lower crime rates.

If I was a criminal, I would either steal a car elsewhere and then hit Tiburon, or else steal or make some plates and put them on just before passing the cameras.

Quote from: blackeyedpeas on July 24, 2009, 10:27:35 PM

Hello Brother Rhys,

I would agree that something like this might not reduce crime, but I do know that things like this make it easier to catch criminals. The same would be true for putting a stolen license plate on your car because police can easily and quickly find out that it doesn't belong on that car. Stolen license plates are also put into national law enforcement databases that can return results now in seconds. This would just be another good tool for law enforcement to use. One could have like discussions about false and/or stolen identifications. As a matter of fact, the same is true for all information placed in law enforcement databases for quick retrieval (i.e. stolen property, fingerprints, methods of operation for specific criminals, behavioral profiles for the worst criminals, etc., etc.). Citizens can do many common sense things to reduce their risks of becoming a victim (i.e. locks, lighting, alarms, etc.). These things do reduce crime, but the biggest challenge is catching the criminal and putting them out of business behind bars. As another example, a neighborhood forming a Neighborhood Watch and putting up signs usually does result in a significant reduction of crime in that neighborhood. Many cost effective measures either serve as a deterrent or aid ON THE CATCHING END! Remember the old saying: criminals will usually pick the softest target - one with the best chance of getting away. So, I would say that these cameras will have a positive effect for an extremely low cost. The camera is a smart investment for the same reasons why a computer in each patrol car is a good investment.

I agree it might put the amateurs out of business, but it would have little effect on the professionals.
Stolen license plates may be put in a database, but only after they are reported stolen. The smart crook would steal them just before he committed the crime.

The real problem is not catching criminals, but the other uses that these cameras can be put to in the hands of the unethical, or by a corrupt and oppressive government.

Big Brother is watching you with RFID microchips

straight.com

Imagine you’re at the grocery store and you take some tortellini from the cooler. Embedded in the packaging is a microchip that emits radio waves. The next thing you know, an ad for a high-end pasta sauce is flashing on a screen mounted on your shopping cart.

Then imagine that by scanning your house for the tiny chips implanted in every manufactured item you own, a thief generates an inventory of your clothing, DVDs, and pricey electronics, and decides to rob your house.

Finally, imagine you walk into an airport and a security officer is immediately able to find out your identity, banking information, and travel history by reading data stored in a chip in your passport—or even implanted under your skin.

Although these scenarios may sound like science fiction, the technology—known as radio-frequency identification, or RFID—is already being used to track goods such as Gillette razor blades and Gap clothing in stores. The patent for a chip that could be used in passports to monitor people in airports belongs to IBM, and a company called VeriChip is marketing a chip that is implanted under the skin in order for people to keep tabs on children, the elderly, and prisoners.

Consumer-privacy advocate Katherine Albrecht, who has briefed Canada’s federal privacy commissioner on the technology, advises Canadians to resist RFID.

“There are certainly things you can do with RFID that might be cool, but the costs of introducing this technology into our society so vastly outweigh the benefits, the technology shouldn’t be deployed at all,” Albrecht told the Georgia Straight.

Since May, enhanced driver’s licences containing RFID chips have been available to British Columbians for an extra fee of $35. The licences broadcast data that can be read by U.S. border officials up to 50 metres away, and allow the cardholder to enter the U.S. without a passport.

In the 2005 book Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move, Albrecht and coauthor Liz McIntyre argue that the use of RFID in identification cards sets up governments to misuse private information.

“If you went to a political event, such as a peace march, political rally, or gun show,” Albrecht explained from her New York office, “with RFID, all the law-enforcement agents would have to do is mill around the crowd with an RFID reader in their backpack and they would be able to pick up all of the ID cards of everybody within a 30-foot radius of where they stood.”

While RFID chips aren’t new—the technology has been in development for some 50 years—companies have only recently embraced their consumer applications. The chips are so small—smaller than a grain of rice—that they are virtually invisible when contained in a product, and are superior to bar codes because they contain data specific to each individual item and can be read through packaging up to 10 metres away. At a cost of about five cents each, RFID chips are an inexpensive way to track inventory as it’s shipped, distributed, and sold.

Having researched hundreds of RFID patents for her book, Albrecht said that companies also plan to track products after they are sold to learn about “how consumers interact with products” for marketing purposes.

“The end point is that every physical object manufactured on planet Earth would have an RFID tag instead of a bar code,” she said. “There would be reader devices to pick up signals everywhere you go, including in our refrigerators to keep track of what we’re eating.”

What is most alarming to NDP MLA Maurine Karagianis, is that consumers aren’t aware that RFID tags are already widespread.

“First and foremost, it [RFID] is being embedded in consumerism without our knowledge or approval,” Karagianis said in a phone interview.

The representative for Esquimalt–Royal Roads is concerned that Canada’s privacy laws aren’t sufficiently robust to deal with the unique challenges of RFID. “We have no regulation around the use or prohibition or restriction on RFID,” she said. “I’m worried that, without adequate discussions of RFID use and application and what the ramifications could be in the future at a legislative level, the discussion will be led by consumer advocates or corporate retail interests.”

Although B.C. information and privacy commissioner David Loukidelis wonders why the U.S. government is pushing for the adoption of a relatively insecure technology for use in border identification documents, he questions the gravity of related privacy concerns. In a phone conversation with the Straight, he pointed out that along with the licences, the B.C. government is issuing a sleeve that blocks the RFID signal when it is not being used.

Loukidelis asserted that global-positioning-system tracking in cellphones is a much more significant privacy issue. “Nevertheless, the principle of being able to track people as they move about is what is of concern, regardless of the particular technology,” he said.

RFID is just one of a growing number of technologies—including Internet marketing, GPS devices, and store-loyalty cards—that threaten our privacy and are not fully understood by consumers, according to Richard Rosenberg, a UBC professor emeritus of computer science who sits on the board of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.

“All of this taken together leads to a substantial decrease in privacy and a lessening of the importance of privacy in a democratic society,” Rosenberg told the Straight.

Terrorists could use internet to launch nuclear attack: report

guardian.co.uk

Terrorists groups could soon use the internet to help set off a devastating nuclear attack, according to new research.

The claims come in a study commissioned by the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND), which suggests that under the right circumstances, terrorists could break into computer systems and launch an attack on a nuclear state – triggering a catastrophic chain of events that would have a global impact.

Without better protection of computer and information systems, the paper suggests, governments around the world are leaving open the possibility that a well-coordinated cyberwar could quickly elevate to nuclear levels.

In fact, says the study, "this may be an easier alternative for terrorist groups than building or acquiring a nuclear weapon or dirty bomb themselves".

Though the paper admits that the media and entertainment industries often confuse and exaggerate the risk of cyberterrorism, it also outlines a number of potential threats and situations in which dedicated hackers could use information warfare techniques to make a nuclear attack more likely.

While the possibility of a radical group gaining access to actual launch systems is remote, the study suggests that hackers could focus on feeding in false information further down the chain – or spreading fake information to officials in a carefully orchestrated strike.

"Despite claims that nuclear launch orders can only come from the highest authorities, numerous examples point towards an ability to sidestep the chain of command and insert orders at lower levels," said Jason Fritz, the author of the paper. "Cyber-terrorists could also provoke a nuclear launch by spoofing early warning and identification systems or by degrading communications networks."

Since these systems are not as well-protected as those used to launch an attack, they may prove more vulnerable to attackers who wish to tempt another nation into a nuclear response.

Governments around the world have recently stepped up their commitment to increasing cyber-defence, after a number of high-profile incidents in which hackers launched attacks on foreign nations. Recent online conflicts, as well as reported attacks on government computer systems in the US, UK and elsewhere have increased the stakes.

In Britain, Gordon Brown recently announced plans to step up online intelligence operations – while in the US, President Obama has said he intends to appoint a cyber-security tsar to ensure that protecting America's computer systems "will be a national security priority".

"Cyberspace is real, and so is the risk that comes with it," he said in May, adding that online attacks are "one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face".

However, the study suggests that although governments are increasingly aware of the threat of cyberwar with other nations, action to bolster those defences does not alleviate the threat of a rogue group that circumvented the expected strategies for online warfare.

Brave New World - UK Government To Install Surveillance Cameras In Private Homes

prisonplanet

The UK government is about to spend $700 million dollars installing surveillance cameras inside the private homes of citizens to ensure that children go to bed on time, attend school and eat proper meals.

No you aren’t reading a passage from George Orwell’s 1984 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, this is Britain in 2009, a country which already has more surveillance cameras watching its population than the whole of Europe put together.

Now the government is embarking on a scheme called “Family Intervention Projects” which will literally create a nanny state on steroids, with social services goons and private security guards given the authority to make regular “home checks” to ensure parents are raising their children correctly.

Telescreens will also be installed so government spies can keep an eye on whether parents are mistreating kids and whether the kids are fulfilling their obligations under a pre-signed contract.

Around 2,000 families have been targeted by this program so far and the government wants to snare 20,000 more within the next two years. The tab will be picked up by the taxpayer, with the “interventions” being funded through local council authorities.

Another key aspect of the program will see parents deemed “responsible” by the government handed the power to denounce and report bad parents who allow their children to engage in bad behavior. Such families will then be targeted for “interventions”.

Both parents and children will also be forced to sign a “behavior contract” with the government known as Home School Agreements before the start of every year, in which the state will dictate obligations that it expects to be met.

The opposition Conservative Party, who are clear favorites to win the next British election, commented that the program does not go far enough and is “too little, too late.”

Respondents to a Daily Express article about the new program expressed their shock at the totalitarian implications of what is unfolding in the United Kingdom under the guise of social services initiatives.

"Why are people not up in arms about this?,” writes one, “This is a complete invasion of privacy, and it totally ignores the fact that the state does NOT own kids. It’s not up to them how parents choose to raise their children, as long as the parents do not actively harm them. Why on earth aren’t the public rioting? It’s completely anathema to basic British freedoms.”

“Excuse me!?! What an incredible intrusion into the privacy of a family! George Orwell must be spinning in his grave right now,” writes another.

“I have one comment to make: it completely violates Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (Human Rights Act 1998). Has this minister and his lackies even done any basic homework on basic human rights and civil liberties? Or rather they’ve just decided to completely ignore them,” adds another.

The move to install surveillance cameras inside private homes is also on the agenda across the pond. In February 2006, Houston Chief of Police Harold Hurtt said cameras should be placed inside apartments and homes in order to “fight crime” due to there being a shortage of police officers.

“I know a lot of people are concerned about Big Brother, but my response to that is, if you are not doing anything wrong, why should you worry about it?” Chief Hurtt told reporters.

Andy Teas with the Houston Apartment Association supported the proposal, saying privacy concerns would take a back seat to many people who would, “appreciate the thought of extra eyes looking out for them.”

If such programs come to fruition and are implemented on a mass scale then the full scope of George Orwell’s depiction of a totalitarian society is his classic novel 1984 will have been realized.

The following passage is from Orwell’s 1984;

The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live — did live, from habit that became instinct — in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

ISP's Fight Back Against Big Brother Spy System That Would Monitor All Internet Traffic And Emails

prisonplanet

A group of over 300 internet service providers and telecommunications firms is fighting back against the British government’s plans to monitor all emails, phone calls and internet activity nationwide.

The London Internet Exchange (LINX), which represents some 330 companies, including BT, Virgin and Carphone Warehouse, says that the government is misleading the public about the extent to which it plans to monitor their communications and internet activity.

LINX has described the Government’s surveillance proposals as an “unwarranted” invasion of people’s privacy.

A statement from the group to the Home Office reads:

“We view the description of the Government’s proposals as maintaining the capability as disingenuous – the volume of data the Government now proposes we should collect and retain will be unprecedented.”

“This is a purely political description that serves only to win consent by hiding the extent of the proposed extension of powers for the state.”

The group also stated that the volume of data the government wishes it to retain cannot be held by any known technology at this time.

Last year the government announced its intention to create a massive central database, gathering details on every text sent, e-mail sent, phone call made and website visited by everyone in the UK.

The programme, known as the “Interception Modernisation Programme”, would allow spy chiefs at GCHQ, the government’s secret eavesdropping agency, the centre for Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) activities, to effectively place a “live tap” on every electronic communication in Britain in the name of preventing terrorism.

Following outcry over the announcement, the government suggested last April that it was scaling down the plans, with then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith stating that there were “absolutely no plans for a single central store” of communications data.

However, as the “climbdown” was celebrated by civil liberties advocates and the plan was “replaced” by new laws requiring ISPs to store details of emails and internet telephony for just 12 months, fresh details emerged indicating the government was implementing a big brother spy system that far outstrips the original public announcement.

The London Times published leaked details of a secret mass internet surveillance project known as “Mastering the Internet” (MTI).

Costing hundreds of millions in public funds, the system is already being implemented by GCHQ with the aid of American defence giant Lockheed Martin and British IT firm Detica, which has close ties to the intelligence agencies.

Currently, any interception of a communication in Britain must be authorised by a warrant signed by the home secretary or a minister of equivalent rank. Only individuals who are the subject of police or security service investigations may be subject to surveillance.

If the GCHQ’s MTI project is completed, black-box probes would be placed at critical traffic junctions with internet service providers and telephone companies, allowing eavesdroppers to instantly monitor the communications of every person in the country without the need for a warrant.

Even if you believe GCHQ’s denial that it has any plans to create a huge monitoring system, the current law under the RIPA (the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act) allows hundreds of government agencies access to the records of every internet provider in the country.

In publicly announced proposals to extend these powers, firms will be asked to collect and store even more vast amounts of data, including from social networking sites such as Facebook.

If the plans go ahead, every internet user will be given a unique ID code and all their data will be stored in one place. Government agencies such as the police and security services will have access to the data should they request it with respect to criminal or terrorist investigations.

This is clearly the next step in an incremental program to implement an already exposed full scale big brother spy system designed to completely obliterate privacy, a fundamental right under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Barcode replacement could introduce new way of tagging items

news.bbc.co.uk

A replacement for the black and white stripes of the traditional barcode has been outlined by US researchers.

Bokodes, as they are known, can hold thousands of times more information than their striped cousins and can be read by a standard mobile phone camera.

The 3mm-diameter (0.1 inches), powered tags could be used to encode nutrition information on food packaging or create new devices for playing video games.

The work will be shown off at Siggraph, a conference in New Orleans next week.

"We think that our technology will create a new way of tagging," Dr Ankit Mohan, one of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers behind the work, told BBC News.

The Bokodes currently consist of an LED, covered with a tiny mask and a lens.

Information is encoded in the light shining through the mask, which varies in brightness depending on which angle it is seen from.

"It is either bright or dark depending on how we want to encode the information," said Dr Mohan, who works for the MIT Media Lab Camera Culture group.

The researchers believe the system has many advantages over conventional barcodes.

For example, they say, the tags are smaller, can be read from different angles and can be interrogated from far away by a standard mobile phone camera.

"For traditional barcodes you need to be a foot away from it at most," said Dr Mohan.

The team has shown its barcodes can be read from a distance of up to 4m (12ft), although they should theoretically work up to 20m (60ft).

"One way of thinking about it is a long-distance barcode."

Initially, said Dr Mohan, the Bokodes may be used in factories or industrial settings to keep track of objects.

However, the team also thinks they could be used in consumer applications, such as supermarkets, where products could be interrogated with a shopper's mobile phone.

For example, they could be used to encode nutritional information or pricing offers.

"One to the side may say 'hey, look at me, I'm a dollar cheaper'," said Dr Mohan.

Taking a picture would also allow people to compare lots of different products quickly.

A similar system could be used in a library, said Dr Mohan.

"Let's say you're standing in a library with 20 shelves in front of you and thousands of books."

"You could take a picture and you'd immediately know where the book you're looking for is."

And the team also believes the tags could find their way into places not normally associated with traditional barcodes.

For example, the system's ability to read angular information could allow its use in motion-capture systems used to create videogames or films.

Dr Mohan said they could also be used to augment the information incorporated into Google Streetview, a service which allows users to browse a selection of pictures taken along city streets.

At the moment, the images for Streetview - accessible through Google Maps - are collected by trucks and cars fitted with several cameras.

"Shop and restaurant owners can put these Bokodes outside their stores and as the Google truck is driving down the street it will capture the information in that."

For example, a restaurant could put menu information inside the tag.

When the data is uploaded to Google Maps, it would automatically be displayed next to the image of the restaurant, said Dr Mohan.

Currently, the tags are expensive to produce - around $5 (£3) each. This is, in part, because the early prototypes require a lens and a powered LED.

However, the researchers believe the technology could be refined so that tags were reflective and require no power.

"We already have prototypes which are completely passive," said Dr Mohan.

In this form, they could cost around 5 cents each, he added.

It is not the first time that companies or researchers have suggested replacements for, or enhancements to, barcodes.

For example, in 2007 Microsoft launched its High Capacity Colour Barcode, a series of coloured geometric patterns.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology - essentially tiny electronic tags that broadcast encoded information - were also touted as a barcode replacement.

Although they are now used in many applications, such as library books, passports and travel passes, RFIDs have yet to displace the familiar black and white stripes of the barcode.

The all-seeing surveillance eye
theage.com.au/

The all-seeing eye was once seen as a divine force, surrounded by dazzling rays of light from on high. Its eyelid heavy but gaze unwavering, the eye was the protective stare of a supreme being watching over us from above.

Now, though, it simply watches, often from the shadows. Peering down from security cameras as we walk the city streets, buy bread at the corner store, fill the car with petrol, or catch a taxi or tram. Tracking us through our mobile phone or when driving through a tollway to Melbourne Airport, which last year trialled "virtual strip search" security scanners. Someone's watching while we're surfing online, sending an email, or updating our Facebook profile to paranoid. Melbourne once held pretensions of being the city that never sleeps. Now, at least, it is the city that never shuts its eyes.

A locked, windowless room within the Town Hall has become the city's high priestess of surveillance. Endless CCTV footage screens along the wall, fed from cameras looking over Melbourne's streets, laneways and dark corners. The latest tilt-and-zoom cameras rotate 360 degrees, so few crannies escape unseen. They can pick out a face in the crowd from a kilometre away.

Lord Mayor Robert Doyle this month announced the city had installed a further 31 "Safe City cameras" in the CBD - bringing the total to 54 - to combat rising street violence. Specially trained security contractors monitor the cameras without respite from the small control room, the exact location of which is secret and off-bounds to media. One sanctioned visitor told The Sunday Age it was like stepping into a reality TV control booth, where you're the producer deciding who should be seen on the big screen.

"There will be groups that say this is Big Brother. I say, 'Bad luck, city safety comes first'," Doyle declared. "The message is now clear to those who wish to commit a crime in our streets: the likelihood is that now you will be seen."

But then, so will everyone else. Former UK information commissioner Richard Thomas, whose term ended in June, once warned Britain was sleepwalking into a "surveillance society". Two years later, in 2006, they woke up "to a surveillance society that is already all around us". The UK is the most-watched patch on Earth, boasting an estimated four million CCTV cameras, and leads the world in building a national DNA database, with more than 7 per cent of the population already logged.

Australia has been more restrained. But the pressure to deploy new and more affordable surveillance technologies is constant. This month, La Trobe University academics proposed installing tracking devices in cars, similar to those used in truck fleets, to charge drivers more for using busier roads during peak hours. In Sydney tomorrow, the city council will debate proposals giving police more access to its CCTV network for general ''intelligence gathering'', and releasing footage to the media to discourage antisocial behaviour.

Access to the City of Melbourne's CCTV system is restricted to police and lawyers for alleged offenders and victims, and unused footage is destroyed after 30 days. An external audit committee monitors compliance of the program with various protocols. But still there are concerns over the all-seeing eye. We can no longer assume activities performed in public places will pass unobserved and unrecorded, the Victorian Law Reform Commission says. Ours is a surveillance society, too.

''It really is no longer possible to be anonymous in most public places. We are very quickly losing the capacity to blend in as part of the crowd,'' says the commission's chairman, Professor Neil Rees. ''Any time you have been into the city of Melbourne your image will have been captured on one of these systems and stored.

''We all have a shared interest in blending in, in having a private conversation in a quiet corner. Now, with all the surveillance equipment out there, that is really not possible to do with confidence.''

The commission will advise the Attorney-General early next year on whether regulation of surveillance technologies is needed to protect people's privacy. Early suggestions include appointing an independent regulator to monitor surveillance of public places.

In a consultation paper released in March, the commission said such surveillance was likely to become more widespread as devices became more affordable and invisible. ''The Surveillance Devices Act in Victoria is 10 years old and the technology has exploded over the last 10 years,'' Rees says. ''It is a profound issue for us as a community. As the equipment gets more and more sophisticated, more and more people will retreat behind high walls. Others are going to have to live with the fact that their every moment is capable of being monitored by somebody.

''We need to strike a balance between getting the best out of technology and not being made to feel we are being intruded on, perhaps overzealously, in public places. That balance is not going to be easy to achieve.''

The commission also highlighted an increase in the use of tracking devices such as GPS, radio frequency identification, automatic number plate recognition, mobile phone surveillance and biometrics. Behavioural modelling by online companies such as Google is another growing concern. The popular online search engine is testing ''interest-based advertising'' in the US that will pitch ads at individual consumers based on ''de-identified'' surveillance of their internet use.

The new technology, which could be in Australia by next year, is part of what The New York Times last month called a sea change in the way consumers encounter the web. People will start seeing customised ads, different versions of websites, even different discounts to other users when shopping, based on what retailers know about their tastes and budget. ''On the old internet, nobody knew you were a dog,'' the article's author wrote. ''On the new targeted internet, they now know what kind of dog you are, your favourite leash colour, the last time you had fleas and the date you were neutered.''

MAGNUM sniffs me as I walk inside Victorian Detective Services, on a violent day in Carnegie. He's a Weimaraner - a gundog - named after the 1980s TV crime series Magnum P.I. Going on 11, his hunting days past, he now acts as a genial mascot of sorts for this party of private investigators.

Over a cup of white tea in his corner office, beneath framed photographs of James Bond and a Scarface montage, general manager Mark Grover talks the surveillance game. ''There is always a reason why someone is under surveillance,'' he says. ''It could be a salesman that is playing the back nine every second day instead of working. It could be an airline pilot who has put in that they are sick or ill but might be flying a cargo plane now in Nigeria, while receiving benefits here. Maybe it's a truck driver knocking off a couple of dozen bottles of red on his delivery … All employers typically are curious about what some of their staff who are no good are up to.''

Grover, a former president of the World Investigators Network, has been in the game for 22 years. Back in the day, his car was his office and a long-lens camera his friend. ''It's tiring, boring, you put on weight after a long time - 14, 15-hour days sitting in the car, standing in the cold. Nobody loves you. No TV. Just watching.''

Technology has since changed the way he watches. He might track targets through their telephone or email, lift revealing photographs from social networking websites or log into CCTV camera footage in Paris or Amsterdam. Surveillance is now in the hands of anyone with a mobile phone camera, he says.

On a table in his office are other tools of his trade: a spy-pen camera small enough to film from your top pocket; a wristwatch camera and a teeny black-box listening device with a SIM card that can be used to eavesdrop on conversations undetected.

''Everything is possible, it's just a matter of asking how it's done,'' he says. ''And staying within the law as well,'' he adds, after a pause.

Surveillance technology has grown so pervasive and inexpensive, anyone might fancy themselves an amateur snoop. Retailers such as OzSpy sell high-resolution spy pens, which record video and audio, from $129, and spy watches with colour video and audio for $199. Spy cameras are hidden inside smoke detectors ($359), desktop clocks ($219), power points ($299) and motorcycle helmets ($189). CCTV cameras sell for as little as $159.

cont....

cont....

The extent to which they may be lawfully used in Victoria differs according to the type of device and activity undertaken, the Law Reform Commission says. Under the Surveillance Devices Act it is illegal to use a listening device to monitor a ''private conversation'' anywhere. But there is no prohibition on using optical surveillance devices outdoors or within a shopping centre; audio surveillance in busy outdoor and indoor areas; using tracking devices such as mobile phones or just good old-fashioned surveillance without the latest gadgets. Data surveillance devices, such as spyware, can be used to communicate and publish information, regardless of whether consent is sought.

Helen Versey, Victoria's second Privacy Commissioner, questions whether the law has kept pace with such technologies. ''Anyone's mobile phone is a tracking device, also there's automatic number plate recognition. All sorts of technologies are improving all the time that can be used to track people and their movements,'' she says. ''Of course, they have benefits such as law enforcement. But it's a matter of being aware of them and keeping the balance right. While recognising they have great uses and benefits, they are also potentially very invasive.''

Keeping an eye on the public sector with a small staff of 14, she can't say for sure whether that balance has been struck in Victoria. Who watches the watchers? In addition to surveillance legislation, Commonwealth and Victorian laws regulate the handling of personal information, but Versey says there are ''significant gaps'' in such regulations, which do not apply to private individuals and businesses with an annual turnover of less than $3 million. She supports calls for the appointment of a specific regulator to oversee all forms of surveillance.

Privacy Victoria also points to the inherent risks of data matching, where an individual's various personal records are aggregated and shared between organisations for public interest purposes, such as law enforcement, research or protecting public revenue. In guidelines released last month, the privacy group said safeguards were needed to stop data being disclosed by an organisation without the specific consent of the individual.

Versey also cautions people more generally about disclosing personal information online, ''because of the difficulty of being able to control it once it is out there in the public domain'', with organisations mining the web for information.

Lloyd Borrett, marketing manager at internet security software provider AVG, says companies are already compiling complete profiles of users. Of greater concern, though, are cyber criminals spying on our personal information or stealing our identities. ''All of the stuff that happens online - the viruses, worms, trojans - all of that is happening now, not because hackers are wanting to have fun like it once was, it's serious cyber criminals trying to get bits of your identity,'' he says. ''That can be your name, birth date, trying to get your credit card numbers or bank account details.''

Data mining by larger online retailers or search engines is relatively harmless, he says. ''In theory, they could gather enough information on you to build up almost an online DNA profile of your buying and thinking trends. Online they're building up a dossier about your likes and dislikes, and … I don't think it's too much of an issue unless people are trading in that information.''

But, he adds, privacy is reliant to some extent on the integrity of companies and regulation, ''and recent examples tell us the integrity of companies and regulation is not something we can rely on that readily''.

ROGER Clarke refuses to contact me via my personal email account on a Google server. Gmail, he says, gathers into its archive all its email traffic and retains it indefinitely: ''All the things I do, all the opinions I've got.''

Clarke, chairman of the Australian Privacy Foundation, witheringly describes Google's offering of an ''opt-out'' from services such as interest-based advertising as a ''very American solution''.

''It's not consent. Consent is where the individual makes a positive decision at the beginning to opt in,'' he says. ''I use a number of Google services. I still use them as my primary search engine, I use Google Maps because they're effective. But the vast majority of people simply swan in there and don't realise what they are making available and what they are getting into, and I think that's a serious problem.

''The network of information they have of individuals is vast. For them to say they are obtaining categorised, general information is nonsense; it's sleight of hand.''

The foundation is calling for nominations for its ''Australian Big Brother Awards'' under two categories: ''the Orwells'' (awarded to the worst corporate invaders) and ''the Smiths'' (in honour of writer George Orwell's doomed hero in 1984).

But there are signs Orwell's totalitarian dystopia may yet remain fiction. Switzerland's data protection watchdog last week demanded Google withdraw its ''street view'' facility, for allegedly not respecting conditions set to respect personal privacy - such as not covering or blurring faces or car licence plates.

In the UK, where former home secretary Jacqui Smith was criticised recently for proposing a ''super-database'' tracking everyone's emails, calls, texts and internet use, the Government has had to resile from introducing compulsory national identification cards after a public outcry.

A House of Lords report, in February, called for the deletion of all DNA profiles on the national database except for those of convicted criminals, and the introduction of binding codes of practice for use of CCTV by both the public and private sectors. The report questioned whether local authorities, rather than police, should mount surveillance operations, after evidence some councils used CCTV to detect illegal rubbish dumping and dog fouling.

Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle's claim that the city's new CCTV regime will help reduce criminal activity is also open to question. Despite an increase in cameras since 1997, both the numbers of incidents recorded and those reported to police have dropped, audit figures show.

Surveillance is a gradual and incessant creep, the House of Lords warns. Unchecked, we march towards a mark where every detail about an individual is recorded and pored over by both the state and private sectors.

By then, though, it will be no use asking who is watching us - because everyone will be.

Test brings scifi depictions of laser weapons vaporizing targets into reality

upi.com

A potential new laser weapon fired from the air to a ground target went through a successful test over White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, Boeing said.

A Boeing spokesman told United Press International the first flight of the Advanced Tactical Laser aircraft was designed primarily as a learning test bed and to demonstrate its feasibility.

The test brings closer to reality fictional movie depictions of laser weapons incinerating or vaporizing targets, but no specifications of the target vehicle or the final outcome of the test were immediately available.

Boeing organized the test jointly with the U.S. Air Force on Aug. 30, the company said.

During the test flight of the ATL aircraft, a C-130H, the ground target was attacked from the air over the missile range. It was the first time that an ATL aircraft demonstrated the high-power laser engagement of a tactically representative target, Boeing said.

The C-130H aircraft took off from Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico and fired the chemical laser through its beam control system while in flight.

The beam control system on board homed in on the unoccupied stationary vehicle and guided the laser beam onto it as directed by ATL’s battle management system. “The laser beam’s energy defeated the vehicle,” Boeing said. It offered no description of what happened to the vehicle.

The company called the test a “milestone,” adding deployment of a similar weapon could transform future battles and save lives.

Greg Hyslop, vice president and general manager of Boeing Missile Defense Systems, said ATL would give fighters a “speed-of-light, ultra-precision engagement capability” that could dramatically reduce collateral damage.

The ATL flight follows a June 13 test in which a laser fired from the air for the first time hit a target board on the ground. Additional tests will now follow to further demonstrate the system’s military utility, but Boeing says the demonstrations have shown that “ATL works, and works very well.”

Research into laser applications in the defense industry has engaged major players and involved other key recent tests.

Northrop Grumman also announced it successfully completed testing of its global positioning system-guided weapons technology at the White Sands Missile Range.

The company’s Viper Strike system is equipped with GPS laser guidance accuracy capabilities and is designed to be integrated into Northrop Grumman’s Hunter unmanned aircraft system.

In August, Boeing and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency announced they moved closer to developing an airborne high-energy laser weapon that will shoot down an upcoming offensive missile. In the first test over the California High Desert, a high-energy laser was fired from a modified 747-400F into a calorimeter, also on board, to measure the power of the beam.

Once there and while still in flight the ABL Jumbo unleashed its laser striking the calorimeter, allowing experts to determine how much more power will be required to make the weapon effective in combat.

Unlike stealth technology, which began as a passive countermeasure against increasingly advanced detection technology, airborne laser offers both pre-emptive and offensive paths of development, analysts said.

Pay with a wave of your hand?

moneycentral.msn.com

It's a simple concept, really: You inject a miniature radio frequency identifier the size of a grain of rice between your thumb and forefinger and, with a wave of your hand, unlock doors, turn on lights, start your car or pay for your drinks at an ultrachic nightspot.

The problem is, the whole concept is a little geeky for most of us, nauseating for some, Orwellian for a few and even apocalyptic for a smattering of religious fundamentalists.

Forget the science of it -- and yes, it does work remarkably well. Forget the convenience of it. Forget that similar identifying technologies, from bar codes to mag stripes, overcame similar obstacles and are now ubiquitous.

Radio frequency ID implants face a hurdle the others did not: ickiness.

"There is sort of an icky quality to implanting something," says Rome Jette, the vice president for smart cards at Versatile Card Technology, a Downers Grove, Ill., card manufacturer that ships 1.5 billion cards worldwide a year.

How RFID devices work

The RFID technology is un-yucky, however. The implanted tag -- a passive RFID device consisting of a miniature antenna and chip containing a 16-digit identification number -- is scanned by an RFID reader. Once verified, the number is used to unlock a database file, be it a medical record or payment information. Depending upon the application, a reader may verify tags at a distance of 4 inches up to about 30 feet. More from MSN Money

The RFID implant has been around for more than 20 years. In its earliest iteration, it provided a convenient way to keep track of dogs, cats and prized racehorses. Few took note or voiced much concern.

Then, in 2002, Applied Digital Solutions (now Digital Angel) of Delray Beach, Fla., deployed to its foreign distributors a beta version of its patented VeriChip technology for human use. Two years later, the VeriChip became the first subcutaneous RFID chip to receive FDA approval as a Class 2 medical device.

One VeriChip distributor in Spain sold the concept to the ultratrendy Baja Beach Club, which offered its patrons in Barcelona and Amsterdam the option of having an implant inserted in their upper arms to pay for their drinks without having to carry wallets in their swimsuits.

'Mark of the beast'?

Web sites sprouted like mushrooms, accusing VeriChip of being the biblical "mark of the beast" predicted in the Book of Revelations as a foreshadowing of the end of the world.

CEO Scott Silverman was equally vilified as being tied to Satan or, worse, Wall Street. Big Brother was surely coming, though he'd have to get pretty close to read your implant. Claims that the tags cause cancer based on lab rat tests upped the amps of outrage.

Were people suddenly curious about RFID implants?

Curiosity is probably an understatement," Silverman concedes. "People have always taken interest in VeriChip. Part of the lore and part of the trouble of this company over the past five years has been just that."

Though VeriChip played no part in using its implant as a payment device, the company quickly moved to calmer waters. Today, it markets its VeriMed Health Link patient identification system to help hospitals treat noncommunicative patients in an emergency. Its future may include more advanced medical applications, including a biosensor system to detect glucose levels.

"A lot of the negative press that we received was a direct result of people having a misconception of what this technology is all about," says Silverman. "We believe that the medical application was and still is the best application for this technology.

"That said, if and when it does become mainstream and more patients are utilizing it for their medical records or for diagnostic purposes, if they want to elect to use it for other applications, certainly they'll be able to do that. But it's going to take a company much larger than us to distribute the retail reader end of it into the Wal-Marts of the world."

Versatile's Jette has watched contactless RFID battle for acceptance in the credit card arena. Just as Silverman suggests, the dynamics and scale of the payment industry tends to work against widespread deployment.

"Mobil Speedpass tried to do it; they got some traction and decided to see if there was any mileage to take this to a Walgreens or McDonald's. You used to be able to use your Speedpass at McDonalds, but that ended because, at the end of the day, you still only have two gigantic payment processors out there, Visa and MasterCard," he says. "To me, the idea of any kind of payment device having ubiquity requires an awful lot of back-end cooperation, of people willing to say, 'I don't need my brand in the customer's wallet.'"

Although the coolness factor is effective from a marketing standpoint -- American Express Blue with its smart (if largely unused) chip is a good example -- Jette says most cardholders would balk at the very thought of a needle.

"With the implanting in the nightclubs, there is a cache of exclusivity there, especially among a certain demographic where people are piercing themselves and getting tattoos. But those are things that really only 20-somethings do a lot. I really doubt that there will be any market for injectable RFID tags or even any single point-of-sale payment device."

"A lot of times, the technology is a solution looking for a problem. Sometimes people fall in love with the technology for its own sake and then try to evangelize a home for it. My business group is just smart cards, and I never forget that although we make money with smart cards, the bills are paid with mag stripe cards. As backwards and old-fashioned as they are, that is still the bulk of what the transactions are going to be in America for a very long time."

Intelligent CCTV could prevent crimes before they happen

telegraph.co.uk

The CCTV technology identifies suspicious individuals and behaviour and then acts to stamp out crimes before they happen.

When a crime looks like it is going to occur, the system will verbally warn the perpetrator and then if necessary alert the nearest police officer.

ISIS, short for Integrated Sensor Information System, is being developed by a team at Queen’s University Belfast at its Centre for Secure Information Technologies.

It is designed to work with the extensive network of CCTV cameras already installed on buses and trains as well as in stations, airports and on the street.

It centres on specially developed “computer vision technology” that analyses images picked up by CCTV and is able to profile individuals to see if they pose a risk and then to check for patterns of behaviour that may be suspicious or anti-social.

The computer constantly assesses the situation and if it becomes a major risk alerts a control room who can send out a verbal warning or alert officers nearby to stampout crimes before they occur.

Criteria that ISIS will look for are likely to include clothing such as hooded tops, sudden movements, odd behaviour such as moving seats and verbal aggression.

Metal detectors, motion detectors and even microphones could eventually be added to sharpen the system further.

“We have four million cameras across the country at present but their impact on anti-social behaviour is actually fairly negligible,” said Dr Paul Miller, who is part of the 50-strong team.

“We aim to develop a system which helps to make crime-free buses, trains, stations and airports a reality. We think it will be a strong deterrent.”

The science fiction film Minority Report, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Cruise, revolves around a “Pre-crime” police unit that is able to identify and prevent crimes before they happen.

Google making app that would identify people's faces
edition.cnn.com

Google is working on a mobile application that would allow users to snap pictures of people's faces in order to access their personal information, a director for the project said this week.

In order to be identified by the software, people would have to check a box agreeing to give Google permission to access their pictures and profile information, said Hartmut Neven, the Google engineering director for image-recognition development.

Google's Profiles product includes a user's name, phone number and e-mail address. Google has not said what personal data might be displayed once a person is identified by its facial-recognition system.

"We recognize that Google has to be extra careful when it comes to these [privacy] issues," Neven told CNN in an exclusive interview. "Face recognition we will bring out once we have acceptable privacy models in place."

While Google has begun to establish how the privacy features would work, Neven did not say when the company intends to release the product, and a Google spokesman said there is not a release timeline.

The technology wouldn't necessarily be rolled out in a separate app, a Google spokesman said. Instead, facial recognition could be issued as an update to an existing Google tool, such as its image search engine.

Google has had the technical capabilities to implement this type of search engine for years.

Just as Google has crawled trillions of Web pages to deliver results for traditional search queries, the system could be programmed to associate pictures publicly available on Facebook, Flickr and other photo-sharing sites with a person's name, Neven said. "That we could do today," he said.

But those efforts had frequently stalled internally because of concerns within Google about how privacy advocates might receive the product, he said.

"People are asking for it all the time, but as an established company like Google, you have to be way more conservative than a little startup that has nothing to lose," said Neven, whose company Neven Vision was acquired by Google in 2006. "Technically, we can pretty much do all of these things."

Neven Vision specialized in object and facial recognition development. The object-related programs are reflected in an image search engine, called Goggles. The face-recognition technology was incorporated into Picasa, Google's photo-sharing service, helping the software recognize friends and family members in your computer's photo library.

In 2009, Google acquired a company called Like.com, which specialized in searching product images but also did work in interpreting pictures of people. Google has also filed for patents in the area of facial recognition.

Privacy concerns

As Google's size and clout grow, so does the chorus of critics who say the company frequently encroaches on people's privacy. Over the years, Google has made various missteps.

The company agreed to pay $8.5 million last year in a legal settlement over grievances that its Buzz social-networking service published the names of people with whom Gmail users regularly communicated. Google quickly fixed the problem, but its repercussions are still being felt: On Wednesday, Google announced it had reached an agreement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to receive an independent review of privacy procedures once every two years.

Google also faces numerous inquiries from governments regarding information collected by its Street View vans. Developers who report to Neven work on aspects of that street-level photography initiative -- mainly privacy-minded features such as the automatic blurring of faces and license plates, he said.

Google also is concerned about the legal implications of facial recognition. Even during trials among its own employees, Google has taken steps to ensure testers have explicitly agreed on record to try out the service.

The novelty of this sort of product may help attract early adopters. But policies would need to be uncomplicated and straightforward to keep users from abandoning it over privacy concerns, experts said.

"Online, people don't think about the privacy concerns; they think about the fun activities they're doing," said Karen North, director of a University of Southern California program that studies online privacy. "They're going to have to figure out a way where people who like the ease and fun of some of these technologies ... online don't feel burned at any given point. Because once they feel burned, they'll opt out."

North said she believes Google has a tendency to push boundaries in order to outdo competitors. The service could push too far by, say, aggregating every photo of a user it finds on the internet without giving that user an easy way to erase certain images, she said.

"Google, in all the best ways, has put itself in a very difficult position -- that no matter what they do, they have to do it biggest and best," North said. "They have trouble starting small and building up because they're Google."

A 'cautious route'

Google acknowledges the nefarious ways someone could leverage facial-recognition technology.

Many people "are rightfully scared of it," Neven said. "In particular, women say, 'Oh my God. Imagine this guy takes a picture of me in a bar, and then he knows my address just because somewhere on the Web there is an association of my address with my photo.' That's a scary thought. So I think there is merit in finding a good route that makes the power of this technology available in a good way."

Neven and a Google spokesman described the facial-recognition app concept as "conservative" in relation to privacy.

"I think we are taking a sort of cautious route with this," the spokesman said. "It's a sensitive area, and it's kind of a subjective call on how you would do it."

While the opt-in requirement limits the app's utility, Neven foresees many circumstances where people would agree to be found.

"If you're an actor in L.A., you want to have everyone recognizing you," he said, sitting outside in the sun at Google's beachside office some 12 miles from Hollywood.

A facial-recognition app could tie in to social-networking initiatives Google is said to be working on. For example, people looking to connect online could use their phones to snap each other's pictures and instantly navigate to that person's profile, rather than having to exchange business cards or remember a user name.

This month, Google redesigned its Profiles pages in a change that more closely resembles Facebook's site. On Wednesday the company announced a new social-search tool, called +1, that allows people to share helpful search links with their friends.

Law Enforcement Increasingly Peeping at E-mail, Instant Messages
www.pcworld.com

Law enforcement organizations are making tens of thousands of requests for private electronic information from companies such as Sprint, Facebook and AOL, but few detailed statistics are available, according to a privacy researcher.

Police and other agencies have "enthusiastically embraced" asking for e-mail, instant messages and mobile-phone location data, but there's no U.S. federal law that requires the reporting of requests for stored communications data, wrote Christopher Soghoian, a doctoral candidate at the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University, in a newly published paper.

"Unfortunately, there are no reporting requirements for the modern surveillance methods that make up the majority of law enforcement requests to service providers and telephone companies," Soghoian wrote. "As such, this surveillance largely occurs off the books, with no way for Congress or the general public to know the true scale of such activities."

That's in contrast to traditional wiretaps and "pen registers," which record non-content data around a particular communication, such as the number dialed or e-mail address that a communication was sent to. The U.S. Congress mandates that it should receive reports on these requests, which are compiled by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Soghoian wrote.

If law enforcement wants to intercept e-mail or instant messages in real-time, they are required to report it. Since 1997, federal law enforcement has requested real-time intercepts only 67 times, with state law enforcement agents obtaining 54 intercept orders.

Soghoian wrote that those low figures may seem counterintuitive given the real-time nature of electronic communications. But all of the communications are stored, he noted.

"It is often cheaper and easier to do it after the fact rather than in real-time," Soghoian wrote.

Cox Communications, a major U.S. service provider, charges $3,500 for a wiretap and $2,500 for a pen register. Account information, however, costs a mere $40.

Soghoian found through his research that law enforcement agencies requested more than 30,000 wiretaps between 1987 and 2009. But the scale of requests for stored communications appears to be much greater. Citing a New York Times story from 2006, Soghoian wrote that AOL was receiving 1,000 requests per month.

In 2009, Facebook told the news magazine Newsweek that it received 10 to 20 requests from police per day. Sprint received so many requests from law enforcement for mobile-phone location information that it overwhelmed its 110-person electronic surveillance team. It then set up a Web interface to give police direct access to users' location data, which was used more than 8 million times in one year, Soghoian wrote, citing a U.S. Court of Appeals judge.

Those sample figures indicate the real total number of requests is likely much, much higher, since U.S. law does not require reporting and companies are reluctant to voluntarily release the data.

"The reason for this widespread secrecy appears to be a fear that such information may scare users and give them reason to fear that their private information is not safe," Soghoian wrote.

In 2000, the House of Representatives considered legislation that would have set standards for reporting requests by police for location information, such as the tracking of mobile phones. But the Department of Justice opposed the bill, Soghoian wrote, saying the reporting requirements would be too time consuming.

Soghoian argues that Congress should have oversight of these new surveillance powers. He recommended mandating that the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts compile statistics on requests for stored communications as they do now for wiretap orders. The information could be sent to the office by the courts rather than the DOJ.

"These reporting requirements would provide Congress with the information necessary to make sound policy in the area of electronic surveillance," Soghoian wrote.

ID scans to attend public events?
www.rawstory.com

The San Francisco Entertainment Commission was scheduled Tuesday to consider a proposal that would mandate ID scans for every person entering a "place of entertainment" attended by more than 100 people -- a move that immediately sparked the fears of civil libertarians, who saw it as yet another encroachment of a creeping "police state" culture.

The commission said it would take up the proposal at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday evening, at their typical meeting place in San Francisco's City Hall.

The proposal before members would also mandate that cameras be placed in event halls where they can be clearly seen by attendees. The systems would also need to be freely accessible to local, state and federal law enforcement on demand.

The rules make no mention of safeguards to protect the privacy of event patrons. They would instead require that scanned IDs and video footage from the venues shall be kept for "no less than 15 days" -- meaning, they would be able to keep the information forever.

It would also mandate that all event attendees pass through a metal detector.

The Electronic Frontiers Foundation, a San Francisco-based privacy non-profit, warned that the rules would ultimately change the city's culture and infringe on Americans' civil liberties.

"Scanning the ID’s of all attendees at an anti-war rally, a gay night club, or a fundraiser for a civil liberties organization would have a deeply chilling effect on speech," they cautioned in a Monday advisory. "Participants might hesitate to attend such events if their attendance were noted, stored, and made available on request to government authorities.

"This would transform the politically and culturally tolerant environment for which San Francisco is famous into a police state."

A spokesman with the EFF was not available for comment.

Though it would likely affect anti-war rallies or other political gatherings, the rules would most directly impact event organizers like concert promoter Live Nation. A message left for the company's corporate communications department received no reply.

The California Music and Culture Association said it was opposed to the proposal, which was initially pitched as a crackdown on nightclubs.

The proposal reads like an eerie echo of a warning imparted by Texas Republican state Rep. David Simpson, who told Raw Story last month that he expected a broader push for TSA-like security at football games and on sidewalks.

"This is not a left or right issue," he said. "They are treating American citizens with great indignity, and we've got to make this right."

End In Sight For Roll Calls As Schools Prep Kids For Head And Hand Scanning
www.independent.ie

An Irish software firm has brought the traditional school attendance register into the computer age.

Two schools have already adopted the latest face-recognition technology to monitor attendance and timekeeping among thousands of pupils, and other schools are planning to introduce the system from September.

Students simply look at a device when they arrive at school and, within seconds, they are scanned, identified and their attendance is registered.

It saves hours of teachers' time recording attendance and 'lates', and provides an at-a-glance record of who's in and who's out.

It also makes it easy to track poor attendance or lateness patterns, which would allow for early intervention to nip a problem in the bud.

And it overcomes the so-called 'buddy punching' problem, where a student can make a false registration by swiping in someone else's card.

Templeogue College in south Dublin has become the first school here to use the system to track attendance and timekeeping among its 700 pupils.

It has also been installed in Ardscoil Ris, Limerick, in recent weeks and a number of other schools are planning to use it from September.

The Anseo Enterprise system has been created by the Co Kerry software company, Ivertec, specialising in educational products and costs an average of about €15 per pupil.

Face-recognition software is now widely used as an ID system, but this is the first time it has been adopted by schools in this country.

A student is required to do little beyond perhaps pulling back a long fringe so the scanner gets a clear view of the face.

Templeogue principal Aoife O'Donnell said they wanted an accurate and efficient system to replace the time-consuming tradition of rolls.

They were investigating systems such as swipe cards when they learned of the face-recognition software, which eliminates the issue of lost or forgotten cards.

She said parents have been generally supportive.

"Within five minutes of school starting, we know exactly who is in the building and if students come in late, it will show up," Ms O'Donnell said.

It is too early to say what impact the system will have on attendance and timekeeping, but when fully operational she said it would allow them to build up attendance profiles.

Ms O'Donnell added that, in an era of cutbacks, staff time was much better employed in teaching rather than in checking and recording attendance manually across a minimum of 24 classes every day.

Sixth-year student Luke O'Callaghan-White (17), said there were a few 'Big Brother'-style jokes initially, but that had all passed. He said the system was "straightforward, efficient and preferable to a year head interrupting the first class for five minutes" to take a roll.

VISA launching ‘digital wallet’ for U.S. banks
rawstory.com

Visa Inc, the world's largest credit and debit card processing network, is building a digital wallet that people can use to pay for things online or with their phones instead of with traditional cards.

The network said on Wednesday it is working with several large U.S. and international banks to develop the wallet. Its partners include US Bancorp, PNC Financial Services, Regions Financial, BB&T Corp, Toronto Dominion's TD Bank and the U.S. arm of Barclays PLC.

The "digital wallet" will store the banks' customers' credit and debit card account information, both for Visa cards and other cards. People can use the wallet to pay for things online or in stores, Visa said.

The network will also have to convince merchants to put a new "one-click" button on their websites, so that potential customers can use their Visa digital wallets to buy things by clicking the button instead of by manually entering all of their account information every time they want to make an online purchase.

Banks, mobile phone operators and networks like Visa are all trying to gain a foothold in the small but high-potential market for U.S. mobile payments. Last week Isis, a separate mobile payments venture run by three of the top four U.S. carriers, said it had modified its initial goals and was now open to working with Visa and MasterCard as it introduces its own mobile wallet.

Jim McCarthy, Visa's head of global products, told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday that mobile payments in the United States "will more easily take off" from people using their smartphones' browsers to buy things online.

But Visa and its rivals, including MasterCard Inc, American Express Co and Discover Financial Services, are also trying to figure out ways for people to buy things with their phones in physical stores.

McCarthy said that a previous, separate Visa pilot to test smartphone payments with Bank of America Corp and other large U.S. banks will be commercially available this summer.

Visa will roll out the digital wallet in the United States and Canada in fall of 2011. McCarthy would not discuss revenue projections.

The San Francisco-based company is increasingly looking to new technology for growth, in the face of an increasing saturated U.S. credit and debit card market and tightening regulations of that market.

Quote from: HisDaughter on May 14, 2011, 02:22:38 PM

I wonder how it works with the girls who at that age believe the more makeup the better? I remember when I was in junior high the photographer couldn't even get a good picture of one girl because her face reflected so much light!

32 Signs That Big Brother Technology Is Growing

endoftheamericandream.com

Do you want your children and grandchildren to live in a futuristic "big brother" control grid where everything they do is watched, recorded, tracked and tightly controlled? Well, that is exactly where things are headed.

We witnessed some really bad totalitarian regimes during the 20th century, but what is coming is going to be far more restrictive than any of the despots of the past ever dreamed was possible.

Today, nearly every government on earth is tightening their grip on their citizens.

Paranoia has become standard operating procedure all over the planet and nobody is to be trusted.

Global politicians will give speeches about liberty and freedom even as they undermine them at every turn.

There are very, very few nations on the planet where liberty and freedom are increasing.

Instead, almost everywhere you turn the "control grid" is getting tighter.

Governments don't want us gathering together and interacting with one another.

Instead, they want us to work our tails off to support the system, they want us enslaved financially and constantly drowning in debt, and they want us addicted to television and other forms of entertainment.
They want us as numb and docile as possible. Meanwhile, all over the globe they continue to construct a futuristic "big brother" control grid that will ensure that they will always be able to control us.

Sadly, this is not the plot to some post-apocalyptic science fiction movie.

This is really happening.

When you read the list below, each of the 32 signs may not seem to be all that significant individually. However, when they are all taken together, they paint a truly frightening picture....

#1 The days of the free and open Internet are slowly coming to an end. Many nations around the world have implemented strict Internet censorship and many other nations are moving in that direction. With each passing year the level of freedom on the Internet diminishes.

Regulation of the Internet has even become a primary topic of discussion at G-8 meetings. According to The New York Times, French President Nicolas Sarkozy is leading the charge for a more "civilized Internet"....

Leaders of the Group of 8 industrialized countries are set to issue a provocative call for stronger Internet regulation, a cause championed by the host of the meeting, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, but fiercely opposed by some Internet companies and free-speech groups.
Why are free speech groups strongly opposing what Sarkozy is trying to do?

It is because western governments want to kill liberty and freedom on the Internet just like China is doing. The Internet has been a great tool for waking people up and distributing information, and the control freaks that want to run all of our lives do not like that one bit.

#2 Internet censorship in China, the largest nation on earth, is absolutely brutal. The Chinese government blocks any websites that talk about such topics as the Dalai Lama, the 1989 crackdown on Tiananmen Square protesters and Falun Gong.

Even web searches for the English word "freedom" are blocked.

#3 Starting next year, all new cellphones will be required to contain a chip that will allow the president to broadcast "emergency alerts" to the cellphones whenever the president wants. Cellphone users will not be allowed to opt out of the presidential messages.

The following is how a CBS news report describes the new system....

A new national alert system is set to begin in New York City that will alert the public to emergencies via cell phones.

It’s called the Personal Localized Alert Network or PLAN. Presidential and local emergency messages as well as Amber Alerts would appear on cell phones equipped with special chips and software.
#4 The U.K. has more surveillance cameras per citizen than anywhere else in the world. In fact, according to one estimate, there are 4.8 million video cameras constantly watching every move citizens make.

#5 A "certified TSA official" was brought in to oversee student searches at the Santa Fe High School prom last weekend.

Will this kind of thing soon be happening at every high school in America?

#6 The U.S. Department of Agriculture is spending huge amounts of money to install surveillance cameras in the cafeterias of public schools so that government control freaks can closely monitor what our children are eating.

The following is how a recent article posted on Infowars.com describes this new program....

Billed as part of an effort to reduce obesity and improve eating habits, small cameras are programmed to take snapshots of lunch trays before and after each student eats. Each child is uniquely identifiable via a barcode attached to the tray. The amount of calories and nutrients that each child has consumed is then calculated via a database containing 7,500 different varieties of food.

#7 The EU is spending hundreds of millions of euros on propaganda campaigns in an attempt to convince the citizens of Europe that the EU is good for them.

#8 Today, FBI surveillance teams regularly employ warrantless GPS tracking to monitor the movements of peaceful activists - even if they are not suspected of ever committing a crime. The Obama administration is fighting in court to keep this practice legal.

#9 According to FBI Director Robert Mueller, "homegrown terrorists" represent as big a threat to American national security as al-Qaeda does.

#10 Federal VIPR teams are establishing a series of "internal checkpoints" all across the United States. The following is how a recent article by Paul Joseph Watson described these VIPR team activities....

The TSA has announced its intention to expand the VIPR program to include roadside inspections of commercial vehicles, setting up a network of internal checkpoints and rolling out security procedures already active in airports, bus terminals and subway stations to roads and highways across the United States.

#11 Thousands of "dysfunctional" families in the U.K. are being subjected to intensive 24-hour surveillance to make sure that their children attend school, go to bed on time and eat proper meals.

#12 U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer says that Amtrak should have a "no ride list" similar to the "no fly list" used at U.S. airports.

Before you can get on an airplane today, your name is checked to make sure that it is not on any international watch lists.

So what do you have to do to get on an international watch list?

Nobody really knows.

#13 U.K. authorities are now admitting that every phone call, text message, email and website visit made by private citizens will be stored for one year and will be available for monitoring by government agencies.

#14 The amount of cell phone surveillance that goes on is absolutely staggering. For example, one German politician named Malte Spitz recently went to court to force Deutsche Telekom to reveal how often his cell phone was being tracked. What he found out was absolutely amazing. It turns out that in just one 6 month period, Deutsche Telekom recorded the longitude and latitude coordinates of his cell phone 35,000 times.

#15 DARPA has now developed new video surveillance technology that many are warning will bring about the end of public anonymity. The following is how the ExtremeTech blog is describing this new technology....

To be in public is to be on camera, but most video footage is discarded, as only so much can be sorted and analyzed -- until now. DARPA has created a technology that can index and analyze video in real-time, marking the end of anonymity in public places.

#16 In the U.K., it is now illegal to photograph the police for any reason whatsoever.

cont

32 Signs That Big Brother Technology Is Growing (cont...)

#17 Police in the U.K. have purchased software that will enable them to easily follow the "digital footprints" of virtually anyone. The following is how one recent news report in the U.K. described this new software....

The Metropolitan Police has bought Geotime, a security programme used by the U.S. military which tracks suspects' movements and communications and displays them on a three-dimensional graphic.

The software aggregates information gathered from social networking sites, GPS devices like the iPhone, mobile phones, financial transactions and IP network logs to build a detailed picture of an individual's movements.

#18 In Tacoma, Washington a seventh grade student was recently questioned by the Secret Service about a message that he posted on his Facebook page.

Be very careful about what you put up on Facebook or Twitter. The entire world can see it.

#19 According to the ACLU, state police in Michigan are using "extraction devices" to download data from the cellphones of motorists that they pull over. This is taking place even if those pulled over are not accused of doing anything wrong.

The following is how an article on CNET News describes the capabilities of these "extraction devices"....

The devices, sold by a company called Cellebrite, can download text messages, photos, video, and even GPS data from most brands of cell phones. The handheld machines have various interfaces to work with different models and can even bypass security passwords and access some information.

#20 Last year, one shocking poll found that 51 percent of Americans agree with this statement: "It is necessary to give up some civil liberties in order to make the country safe from terrorism."

#21 The MPAA and RIAA have submitted their master plan for enforcing copyright rights to the new Office of Intellectual Property Enforcement and it includes installing spyware on everyone's computers that would detect and delete any infringing materials.

#22 The U.K.'s new Internet law includes a "three strikes" rule that allows your entire family to be cut off from the Internet if anyone who lives in your house is accused of copyright infringement - without proof or evidence or trial.

#23 Would you like to have your face scanned and your ID recorded every time you attend a public event? Don't laugh. The San Francisco Entertainment Commission is actually proposing a new rule which "would require all venues with an occupancy of over 100 people to record the faces of all patrons and employees and scan their ID’s for storage in a database which they must hand over to law enforcement on request."

#24 Today, the U.S. government and governments all over the industrialized world have become so obsessed with reducing carbon emissions that now they even tell us what kinds of light bulbs we are allowed to buy.

#25 The Obama administration is developing a universal "Internet ID" program that would watch, track, monitor and potentially control your activity on the Internet. These "trusted identities" are being touted as a way to increase safety and security on the Internet and as a way to eliminate the need for dozens of different usernames and passwords.

#26 As I have written about previously, the "Internet kill switch" is rapidly becoming one of the favorite new tools of tyrannical governments all over the globe....

Once upon a time, the Internet was a bastion of liberty and freedom, but now nation after nation is cracking down on it. In fact, legislation has been introduced once again in Congress that would give the president of the United States an "Internet kill switch" that he would be able to use in the event of war or emergency. Of course there would be a whole lot of wiggle room in determining what actually constitutes a true "emergency". The members of Congress that are pushing this "Internet kill switch" bill want the U.S. to become more like China in this regard.

#27 A shocking document released by Wikileaks proves that high level U.S. government officials have been pushing for North American integration. According to the document, some of the goals of this integration would be to turn North America into an economic zone similar to the EU, to have one common currency for the entire continent and to have one common "security perimeter" for the entire continent.

#28 One of the most liberty-killing pieces of legislation in recent years was the Patriot Act. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Republicans and the vast majority of Democrats will never vote against the renewal of the Patriot Act because they don't want to look "soft" on terrorism.

#29 If you display the wrong political message on your car, you may find law enforcement officials cracking down on you.

A 73-year-old Virginia resident was recently kicked out of a national park for displaying a sticker promoting "Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty" on his car.

The following is an excerpt from a recent Rutherford Institute report about this incident....

The Rutherford Institute has come to the defense of a 73-year-old Virginia resident who was allegedly ordered by a park ranger to remove his car from a national military park in South Carolina because of political messages attached to his vehicle. Jack Faw, whose ancestors fought in the historic battle memorialized at Kings Mountain National Military Park, contacted The Rutherford Institute after being told by a park ranger that the decal promoting a political organization associated with Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), which was displayed on the back window of Faw's car, was not allowed in the park.

#30 Brutal crowd control techniques are not just for major events anymore. Recently, riot police in Illinois used tear gas, LRAD sound weapons and crowd suppression tactics against a bunch of college students that were just blowing off some steam at a year-end block party at Western Illinois University.

#31 The U.S. government is gathering more information on all of us than ever before. According to a recent article in the Baltimore Sun, every six hours the volume of information that the NSA gathers is equivalent to the entire Library of Congress.

Nobody is anonymous anymore. The truth is that the U.S. government, governments across the globe and major international corporations have more information about you than you probably ever dared to imagine.

#32 If you think things are bad now, just wait until you see what global authorities have planned for the future.

Are you ready to live in a "Planned-opolis"? Are you ready to use a "calorie card" and to have what you eat determined by a "global food council"?

The entire globe is moving in the direction of totalitarianism. Our world is literally becoming a prison grid. Of course those in power say that we need more regulation and more control "for the good of humanity", but that has never worked out too well in the past, now has it?

If you don't like the direction this world is headed then now is the time to stand up and let your voice be heard. If you wait until they are ripping the last shreds of liberty and freedom away from you it will be too late.

How Technology Is Challenging The Church

religion.blogs.cnn.com

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, and Bible publishers are ostentatiously commemorating the landmark by producing an abundance of gorgeous doorstops. Leather bound Bibles. Two-volume sets. Replicas of the 1611 version complete with “original” illustrations.

The hoopla is entirely justified, since the King James Bible revolutionized Bible reading, bringing Scripture into a common vernacular for the first time for the English-speaking world.

It is not too much to say that the King James Bible - mass produced as it was, thanks to a new technology called the printing press - democratized religion by taking it out of the hands of the clerical few and giving it to the many.

Today, another revolution in Bible reading is underway – one that has nothing to do with gilt-edged paper. If the King James Bible brought the Bible to the English-speaking masses, today’s technology goes a giant step further, making Scripture - in any language and any translation - accessible to anyone on earth with a smartphone.

Just like the 500-year-old Protestant Reformation, which was aided by the advent of the printing press and which helped give birth to the King James Bible, changes wrought by new technology have the potential to bring down the church as we know it.

In the face of church leaders who claimed that only they could interpret the Bible for the common people, Reformation leaders like Martin Luther taught that nothing supersedes the authority of the Word itself.

"A simple layman armed with Scripture,” Luther wrote, “is greater than the mightiest pope without it."

In that vein, digital technology gives users the text, plain and simple, without the interpretive lens of established authorities. And it lets users share interpretations with other non-authorities, like family members, friends and coworkers.

With Scripture on iPhones and iPads, believers can bypass constraining religious structures - otherwise known as “church” - in favor of a more individual connection with God.

This helps solve a problem that Christian leaders are increasingly articulating: that even among people who say that Jesus Christ is their personal Lord and savior, folks don’t read the Bible.

According to a 2010 survey, more than a third of born-again Christians “rarely or never” read the Bible. Among “unaffiliated” people - that is, Americans who don’t belong to a religious congregation - more than two thirds say they don’t read the Bible.

Especially among 18-to-29 year olds, Bible reading has come to feel like homework, associated with “right” interpretations and “wrong ones,” and accompanied by stern lectures from the pulpit.

Young Christians “have come to expect experiences that appear unscripted and interactive,” the Christian demographer Dave Kinnaman told the Christian magazine Charisma in 2009, “that allow them to be open and honest with their questions, that are technologically stimulating, that are done alongside peers and within trusted relationships.”

This yearning for a more unmediated faith - including Bible verses live in your pocket or purse 24/7, available to inspire or console wherever and whenever they’re needed - has met an enthusiastic embrace.

For growing numbers of young people, a leather-bound Bible sitting like an artifact on a stand in the family living room has no allure. It’s not an invitation to exploration or questioning.

Young people want to “consume” their spirituality the way they do their news or their music. They want to dip and dabble, the way they browse Facebook.

Thus the almost-insane popularity of Youversion, a digital Bible available for free on iTunes and developed by a 34-year-old technology buff and Christian pastor from Oklahoma named Bobby Gruenewald. He conceived of it, he told me, while on a layover at Chicago O'Hare International Airport, wishing he had a Bible to read.

“What we’re really trying to address is, how do we increase engagement in the Bible?” he said.

Now available in 113 versions and 41 languages, including Arabic, Youversion has a community component that allows users to share thoughts and insights on Bible verses with friends. It has been installed on more than 20 million smartphones since 2008.

On May 2, Youversion staged its own King James commemorative event: for 400 seconds, starting at noon, more than 10,0000 users logged on and read a portion of the Bible – King James translation, of course - a kind of 21st century Bible-reading flash mob.

Traditionalists worry that technology allows young believers to practice religion without committing to what in the south is called “a church home” - and they’re right.

I did a public Q&A with Michigan pastor Rob Bell on the eve of the publication of his new bestseller "Love Wins" and was astonished, during the book-signing that followed, at how many acolytes felt they knew Rob through his sermons, which they regularly downloaded off the internet, even though they had never met him. They hailed from places like Australia, South Africa and New Jersey.

They listen to Bell while they’re working out, or commuting to work. They get their religion - like their meals – on the run.

It is now possible to imagine the extinction of the family Bible, long given as a gift on graduation day or other big occasions and inscribed with special dates: births, marriages, deaths.

Instead, the Bible may someday exist exclusively online, with features that allow for personalization: Link to photos of weddings and baptisms! “Share” favorite verses!

When Bible study can be done on Facebook as easily as in the church basement, and a favorite preacher can teach lessons via podcast, the necessity of physically gathering each week in the same place with the same people turns remote.

Without a doubt, this represents a new crisis for organized religion, a challenge to think again about what it means to be a “body” of believers.

ChristiansUnite Forums

Entertainment => Computer Hardware and Software => Topic started by: HisDaughter on November 08, 2008, 12:28:32 PM